SHAKSPER 

NOT 

SHAKESPEARE 


IN  UMBRA 


WILLIAM  H.EDWARDS 





ENGLISH   LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

No. 


ENGL.  LIB.  FD. 


SHAKSPER  NOT 
SHAKESPEARE 


BY 

WILLIAM    H.  EDWARDS 

Author  of  "  The  Butterflies  of  North  America," 
"A  Voyage  up  the  River  Amazon,"  etc. 


fllitb  portraits  and  f  ac-simtlea 


I/KT   KVKRY  TUB   STAND   ON   ITS  OWN   BOTTOM 

—  Apt  Proverb 


CINCINNATI 

THE   ROBERT   CLARKE   COMPANY 
1900 


ENGL  LIB.  FD, 


COPYRIGHT,  1900, 

BY 

THE  ROBERT  CLARKE  COMPANY, 
Entered  at  Stationers'  Hall,  London. 


' '  The   life   of  Shaksperc   is   a  fine   -mystery,    and 
tremble  every  day  lest  something  should  turn  up" 

— CHARGES  DICKENS. 


663 


INTRODUCTORY. 


It  is  full  time  that  reasonable  men  should  re-exam- 
ine the  evidences  on  which  they  have  believed  that  an 
illiterate  butcher,  from  an  ignorant  and  bookless  in- 
land village,  who  flew  to  London  in  disgrace  before 
the  constable,  and  became  a  servitor,  and  later,  a  player 
at  a  public  theater,  the  then  most  degraded  place  of 
amusement,  and  who  spent  the  greater  part  of  every 
year  in  strolling  through  England  with  his  troupe  of 
comedians,  sat  himself  down,  and  without  preparation 
or  knowledge,  dashed  off  Hamlet, — and  not  only  Ham- 
let, but  nearly  two  score  of  the  world's  greatest  plays. 
This  exploit  is  so  discordant  with  the  facts  of  the 
man's  life  and  environment,  that  his  ablest  and  most 
authoritative  biographer  is  obliged  to  suggest  that 
these  plays  were  written  "without  effort";  that  is, 
without  study  or  equipment,  "by  inspiration,  not  by 
design' ' ,  thus  making  of  the  Bard  of  his  admiration, 
as  he  never  wearies  of  calling  him,  a  species  of  literary 
Blind  Tom.  He  certainly  did  write  by  inspiration,  if 
he  wrote  at  all,  for  in  his  uninspired  moments  he  pos- 
sessed not  one  accomplishment  or  characteristic  that 
would  help  him  to  the  writing  of  a  play  of  any  sort,— 

(v) 


VI  INTRODUCTORY. 

not  even  the  manual  art  of  writing.  Another  biogra- 
pher, of  high  authority,  tells  us  that  this  man  wrote 
the  plays  simply  to  fill  the  theater  and  his  own 
pockets — not  because,  as  a  poet,  he  was  compelled  to 
sing.  In  the  pages  to  follow,  I  assert  and  prove  that 
the  Shakespeare  plays  were  not  written  for  William 
Shaksper's  theater,  and  that  no  one  of  them  was  ever 
played  at  his  theater,  except  in  special  scenes,  or  in 
pantomime;  and  also  that  no  man,  during  his  lifetime, 
attributed  the  plays  to  William  Shaksper,  or  suspected 
him  of  any  authorship  whatever.  I  assert  and  prove 
that,  until  the  issue  of  the  First  Folio  of  the  Collected 
Plays,  in  1623,  years  after  the  death  of  William  Shak- 
sper, these  plays,  singly  or  collectively,  had  no  .repu- 
tation whatever;  that  they  were  not  comprehended  by 
the  people,  learned  or  unlearned,  of  that  age;  and  that 
they  are  but  just  now,  after  a  lapse  of  three  hundred 
years,  beginning  to  be  comprehended.  The  Shaksper 
myth  originated  in  the  verses  of  Ben  Jonson  prefixed 
to  the  Folio,  written  as  a  paid  advertisement,  and  in 
the  bitterest  ridicule  of  William  Shaksper  and  the  pre- 
tensions set  up  for  him  by  the  syndicate  of  publishers: 
also  in  the  lying  testimony,  in  the  same  Folio,  which 
Heminge  and  Condell,  Shaksper's  ignorant  fellow- 
players,  are  made  by  some  unknown  writer  to  stand 
sponsors  for.  I  show  that  he  died  as  devoid  of  ac- 
complishments as  when  he  entered  L,ondon, — unknown 


INTROrUCTORY.  VU 

to  any  man  of  letters  or  of  eminence,  unnoticed  and 
unlamented.  The  English  speaking  world  has  been 
humbugged  in  this  matter  long  enough,  but  the  labors 
of  Halliwell-Phillipps,  of  Ingleby,  and  Furnivall,  and 
Fleay,  at  length  enable  us  to  know  exactly  what  Wil- 
liam Shaksper  did  do,  and  what  he  did  not  do.  He 
made,  and  stuck  to,  and  left  behind  him,  a  great  heap 
of  money,  and  that  was  the  sole  achievement  of  his 
fifty-two  years  on  this  planet.  Began  poor,  died 
rich — which  a  Harvard  professor,  another  biographer, 
thinks  was  as  wonderful  a  feat  as  the  writing  of  the. 
Shakespeare  plays.  It  is  enough  for  me  to  prove  that 
William  Shaksper  did  not  write  these  plays.  Who 
did,  I  know  not,  and  offer  no  suggestions;  but  when 
the  venerable  Shaksper  image  has  tumbled,  and  the 
critics  have  a  little  time  to  clear  their  eyes  of  dust  and 
cobwebs,  the  real  authors  may  be  discovered, — authors, 
for  I  believe  there  were  several  associates  who  wrote 
under  the  assumed  name  of  "William  Shakespeare." 

WILLIAM  H.  EDWARDS. 


CONTENTS. 


THE  PROPOSITION,        ........      i 

THR  DEMONSTRATION, i 

PART  I. 

I.  The  Family  of  William  Shaksper,  ...       7 

II.  As  to  the  House  in  which  John  Shaksper  Lived      .     16 

III.  The  School  advantages  of  the  Boy  William,  .     20 

IV.  The  Youth  of  William  Shaksper,     .        .        .        .33 
V.  Whither? 40 

VI.  The  Life  of  William  on  entering  London,        .         .     49 

VII.  The  Theaters  in  London, 94 

VIII.  William  Shaksper's  Thirst  for  Wealth,    .         .        .177 
IX.  The  Testimony  of  the  Plays, 193 

PART  II. 

X.  References  to  Shakespeare,  Author  or  Works,  or 

to  the  Player,  Shaksper,  or  Shakspere,         .         .  259 

XI.  The  First  Folio, 3°4 

XII.  Heminge  and  Condell, 35° 

XIII.  The  Sonnets, 365 

XIV.  Last  years  at  Stratford,  and  death  of  Shaksper,       .  375 
XV.  That  William  Shaksper  never  learned  to  write,        .  385 

XVI.  Further  evidence  of  the  ignorance  of  contempo- 
raries respecting  William  Shaksper,     .         .        .  4J3 
XVII.  Absence  of  allusions  to  Stratford-on-Avon,   or  to 
Warwickshire,  in  the  Plays;  the  Authors  unob- 
servant of  Nature, 43° 

XVIII    Views  of  the  Baynes  School, 43$ 

(ix) 


X  CONTENTS. 

XIX.  Views  of  the  Phillipps  School;   of  Fleay  and  some 

other  commentators,  .....  449 

XX.  The  Smattering,  Picking-up  School,        .         .         .453 

XXI.  The  Likenesses  of  William  Shaksper,      .         .         .  464 

XXII.  A  Suggestion, 486 

XXIII.  The  Summing  Up,  491 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

I.  Fac-simile  of  John  Shaksper's  name,              .  .          8 

2-4.  Other  styles  of  same,         ....  8 

5.  Same,  with  terminal  German  r,  .            .  .9 

6.  Another,  with  open  German  terminal  r,    .  .  9 

7.  Same,  with  terminal  e  following  the  German  r,  .    9,  10 

8.  The  real  boy  Shaksper,        .  .            ...  26 

9.  Rolfe's  notion  of  boy  Shaksper,           .  .  .27 

10.  William  Kemp,  Shaksper's  Instructor  in  Comedy,  60 

11.  Richard  Tarleton,  another  clown  of  same  Company,  61 

12.  Interior  of  the  Swan  Theater,  1596     .            .            .  106 

13.  William   Shaksper's  pretended    signature  to  deed, 

from  Malone,  .....      387 

14.  The  same,  Boston  Library  version,  .  .  390 

15.  The  pretended  signature  to  a  mortgage,  Boston  Li- 

brary version,  .  .  .  .  391 

16.  The  five  pretended  signatures,  Deed,  Mortgage,  and 

Will,  after  Drake,       .  .  .  .  -392 

17.  Malone's  copy  of  the  three  Will  signatures,          .  394 

18.  Same,  enlarged,  .....      395 

19.  Second  and  third  of  the  Will  signatures,  Boston  Li- 

brary version,  .....      39^ 

20.  The  letters  a,  k,  s,  p,  of  the  three  Will  signatures, 

Malone,  ....  -398 

21.  The  three  Will  signatures,  from  Lee,        .  400 

22.  Fac-simile  of  the  name  John  Shaksper,  .      4°5 

23.  The  counterfeit  signature  of  William  Shaksper  in  the 

Florio  Montaigne,      .  .  .  411 

24.  The  Droeshout  likeness  of  William  Shaksper,      .  465 

25.  The  Flower  Portrait  of  William  Shaksper,     .  .      469 

26.  Macmonnies'  Statue  of  William  Shaksper,  472 

27.  The  Stratford  Bust,        .  -474 

28.  The  Kasselstadt  Death  Mask  of  no  one  knows  whom,      482 

29.  Lord  Ronald  Gower's  composition  likeness  of  Will- 

iam Shaksper,  at  Stratford,  .  .  .  • .     4^4 

(xi) 


SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE 


THE  PROPOSITION. 

That  William  Shaksper  could  not  have  written  the 
"Shakespeare"  poems  and  plays. 

"It  must  either  be  shown  that  Bacon  did  actually 
write  them,  in  which  case  Shaksper  was  not  their 
author,  or  that  Shakspere  could  not  possibly  have  written 
them,  in  which  case  somebody  else  must  have  done  so" 
Alfred  Russel  Wallace,  Iy.I,.D.,  F.R.S.,  etc.,  etc.,  in 
the  Arena,  July,  1893. 

"The  whole  case  seems  to  lie  in  this:  that  the  bur- 
den of  proving  that  Shakspere  did  not  write  the  works 
rests  upon  those  who  say  he  did  not  write  them,  and 
as  yet  these  persons  have  not  submitted  an  item  of 
proof."  ("Listener"),  Boston  Transcript,  6th  No- 
vember, 1897. 

THE  DEMONSTRATION. 

I  propose  to  show  that  William  Shaksper,  often 
called  Shakspere,  could  not  possibly  have  written  the 
works  attributed  to  him  under  the  name  of  "William 
Shakespeare",  or  "Shake-speare",  in  which  case,  ac- 
cording to  Dr.  Wallace,  "somebody  else  must  have 
done  so".  It  matters  not  who  that  somebody  was. 
The  poems  and  plays  are  in  evidence  that,  in  the  time 
of  Elizabeth  and  James,  there  lived  one  man  or  several 
men  who  wrote  them;  but  that  the  man  was  the  player 
whose  family  name  was  "Shaksper",  and  whose  name 
is  appended  to  a  deed  and  a  mortgage  "Shaksper" 
and  "Shakspar"  and  three  times  to  a  will  "Shaksper", 


2  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKKSPKARE). 

there  is  no  evidence;  there  is  nothing  but  inference, 
conjecture,  unwarranted  assumption  and  baseless 
(though  general)  reputation.  During  his  life  of  fifty- 
two  years  none  of  his  relations,  neighbors,  or  intimates, 
and  none  of  his  contemporaries,  testified  that  this  man 
was  the  author  of  these  works.  The  story  originated 
after  his  death — in  mockery,  and  gathered  strength  as 
the  years  went  by,  for  the  simple  reason  that  originally 
nobody  cared  for  the  Shakespeare  plays,  or  who  wrote 
them.  Towards  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
when  all  who  had  known  anything  of  the  matter  had 
passed  away,  the  legend  received  a  fresh  impetus  from 
certain  antiquarians  and  story-tellers;  and  when,  two 
generations  ago,  some  one  bethought  him  of  looking 
into  the  matter,  the  whole  world  was  attributing  the 
plays  to  illiterate  William  Shaksper.  A  great  deal  of 
investigation  has  been  going  on  during  these  last 
years,  and  as  the  result,  I  undertake  to  show  that  the 
possibilities  and  facts  are  all  against  the  Stratford 
man.  I  propose  also  to  satisfy  the  requirement  of 
the  listener  of  the  Transcript. 

I  shall  ground  my  arguments  largely  on  citations 
from  the  gth  (and  last)  edition  of  Mr.  J.  O.  Halliwell- 
Phillipps'  "Outlines  of  the  Life  of  Shakespeare,"  Lon- 
don, 1890,  and  Dr.  C.  J.  Ingleby's  "Centurie  of 
Prayse",  2d  edition,  edited  by  Miss  1/ucy  Toulmin 
Smith,  1879. 

Mr.  F.  G.  Fleay,  one  of  the  most  eminent  of  the 
Shakespearian  scholars,  says:  "The  documents  on 
which  the  facts  of  his  (William  Shaksper's)  private 
life  are  founded  have  been  excellently  well  collected 
and  arranged  in  the  Outlines,  etc.,  by  Mr.  Phillipps. 
This  book  is  a  treasure  house  of  documents,  and  it  is 


PROPOSITION.  3 

greatly  to  be  regretted  that  they  are  not  published  by 
themselves". 

The  suggestion  of  Mr.  Fleay  seems  to  have  been 
acted  on  by  Mr.  Daniel  \V.  Wilder,  who  in  1893,  at 
Boston,  published  "The  Life  of  Shakespeare  (Shak- 
sper)  compiled  from  the  best  sources  without  Com- 
ment' ' .  He  copies  word  for  word  all  the  facts  given 
by  Mr.  Phillipps,  8th  edition.  Mr.  Wilder  says  in  his 
preface:  "Mr.  Phillipps'  studies  embraced  the  whole 
field  of  our  earlier  literature.  .  .  .  Gradually  he 
came  to  concentrate  himself  upon  Shakespeare  (Shak- 
sper)  alone,  and  more  particularly  upon  the  facts  of 
his  life' ' .  The  other  work,  '  'The  Centurie  of  Prayse' ' , 
with  its  supplement  by  Dr.  F.  J.  Furnivall,  1886,  is  the 
result  of  a  painstaking  search  through  all  English  lit- 
erature, poets,  prose  writers,  records  of  every  de- 
scription, from  diaries  and  note  books  to  the  records  of 
the  Master  of  the  Revels,  (as  to  the  names  of  the 
plays  supposed  to  be  Shakespeare's  acted  before  the 
court).  Private  correspondence  has  everywhere  been 
examined  for  a  mention  of  either  player  Shaksper,  or 
author  Shakespeare,  or  allusions  to  the  Shakespeare 
works;  and  all  this  for  a  period  of  one  hundred  years, 
beginning  soon  after  the  arrival  at  London  of  the 
player,  and  soon  after  the  first  appearance  of  the 
Shakespeare  Plays., 

Every  mention  of  either  player  or  author  or  allusion 
or  reference  to  works  for  one  hundred  years  by  any- 
body which  has  come  down  from  that  age,  with  two  or 
three  exceptions  to  be  hereafter  noted,  is  given  in  this 
valuable  book. 

I  shall  also  cite  Richard  Grant  White's  Memoirs 
prefixed  to  his  edition  of  the  "Complete  Works  of 


4  SHAKSPICR   NOT   SHAK£SP£ARIt 

William  Shakespeare";  and  the  same  author's  Studies 
in  Shakespeare' ' ;  and  "England  Without  and  Within", 
etc.;  Drake's  "Shakespeare  and  His  Times",  London, 
1817;  J.  P.  Collier's  "Life  of  Shakespeare,  and  His- 
tory of  the  English  Stage  to  the  time  of  Shakespeare", 
1843,  New  York  ed.,  1853;  "Shakespeare's  Prede- 
cessors in  the  English  Drama",  by  J.  Addington  Sy- 
monds,  London,  1884;  F.  G.  Fleay's  "Chronicle  His- 
tory of  the  Life  and  Works  of  William  Shakespeare' ' , 
London,  1886*;  and  his  "Chronicle  History  of  the 
English  Stage",  1890;  Bishop  Wordsworth's  "Shake- 
speare and  The  Bible",  3d  Ed.,  London,  1880;  Pro- 
fessor Barrett  Wendell's  "William  Shakspere",  Bos- 
ton, 1894;  Mrs.  Dall's,  "What  we  really  know  about 
Shakespeare",  New  York,  rS95;  Ruggles',  "The  Plays 
of  Shakespeare  founded  on  Literary  Forms",  Boston, 
1895;  "Our  English  Homer,  or  Shakespeare  His- 
torically Considered",  by  Thomas  W.  White,  London, 
1892;  Sidney  Lee's  "Life  of  William  Shakespeare", 
London  and  New  York,  1898;  Dowden's  "Introduction 
to  Shakespeare",  New  York,  1895;  Prof.  G.  L.  Craik's 
"English  of  Shakespeare,  and  English  Literature  and 
Language";  and  Edwin's  ^Reed's  Bacon  vs.  Shake- 
spere",  Boston,  1897.  Also  somewhat  from  Dr. 
Doran's  "Annals  of  the  Stage";  and  from  the  writings 
of  the  Shakespearian  editors,  Drs.  Rolfe  and  Furni- 
vall;  and  rather  by  way  of  comment,  I  shall  quote 
from  Smith's  "Bacon  and  Shakespeare",  London, 
1857;  Morgan's  "The  Shakespearean  'Myth",  3d  ed., 
Cincinnati,  1888;  Donnelly's  "The  Great  Crypto- 

*  The  first  of  these  books  will  be  referred  to  as  "Fleay"  or 
"Fleay,  Life",  the  other  as  "Fleay,  Hist." 


THE  PROPOSITION.  5 

gram",  Chicago,  1888;  and  Mrs.  Potts'  "Did   Francis 
Bacon  write  Shakespeare?",  lyondon,  1893. 

Halliwell-Phillipps  is  the  greatest  authority  on  the 
subject  of  William  Shaksper  by  consent  of  all  Shak- 
sperians.  He  was  a  most  indefatigable  worker,  and 
devoted  the  greater  part  of  his  long  life  and  a  great 
part  of  his  fortune  to  collecting  the  facts  relating  to 
him  of  Stratford,  under  the  belief  that  he  was  the 
same  individual  as  the  author  Shakespeare,  and  in 
searching  for  documents  to  illustrate  his  life.  Conse- 
quently we  know  a  vast  deal  about  William  Shaksper, 
and  about  everybody  related  to  him,  his  grandfather, 
his  father,  his  brothers  and  sisters,  his  daughters  and 
sons-in-law,  '  'and  his  cousins  and  his  aunts' ' ;  also  about 
Stratford-on-Avon.  We  know  of  this  William  from 
his  boyhood  to  his  departure  for  I/mdon,  and  in 
lyondon  and  Stratford  again  to  the  day  of  his  death 
and  then  to  his  burial.  We  know  of  him  as  a  player, 
as  part  proprietor  of  one  or  more  theaters,  as  poor,  and 
as  rich.  We  have  in  great  detail  his  business  transac- 
tions, his  purchase  of  lands  and  houses,  his  deeds  and 
mortgages,  his  business  of  loaning  money,  his  suits  at 
law;  his  trading  in  various  lines,  but  surprisingly  noth- 
ing whatever  concerning  any  literary  employment  cr  pro- 
clivities. A  thousand  times  Mr.  Phillipps  speaks  of 
him  as  "the  great  dramatist",  or  "the  bard  of  our  ad- 
miration". Even  in  the  index  he  itemizes  about  "the 
great  dramatist".  His  two  large  volumes  comprise 
nine  hundred  pages, — and  after  all,  striking  out  some 
few  elegiac  verses,  or  eulogies,  from  the  beginning  of 
the  successive  Folio  editions  of  the  Shakespeare  Plays, 
for  good  and  sufficient  reasons,  (which  I  shall  give  in 
due  time)  there  is  not  one  line  in  the  whole  work  thai 


6  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

identifies  William  Shaksper  as  the  author  of  the  poems 
and  plays — not  one  line.  We  are  made  to  know  about 
him  in  every  aspect  but  that  of  author,  and  there  his- 
tory is  silent.  The  biography,  therefore,  is  of  no  more 
value  in  the  case  than  would  have  been  that  of  Robert 
Arden,  his  grandfather.  Mr.  Phillipps  has  carved  for 
himself  an  unbeautiful  idol,  out  of  a  shaky  pfece  of 
timber,  and  grovels  before  it  as  if  he  were  a  Polynesian 
or  a  Hindoo.  The  waste  of  time  and  labor  shown  by 
his  "Outlines"  is  pitiful.  However,  as  most  people 
believe,  without  knowing  why,  just  as  Mr.  Phillipps 
believed,  I  have  to  follow  his  lead,  but  before  I  get 
through  I  will  substantiate  my  proposition. 

The  name  Shakespeare  is  quite  another  etymologi- 
cally  and  orthographically  from  Shagsper,  or  Shak- 
spere,  or  Shaksper,  or  Shaxpeyr,  or  Shackysper,  or 
Shaxper.  It  is  not  in  evidence  that  any  author  lived 
in  tbe  age  of  Elizabeth  whose  family  and  baptismal 
name  was  William  Shakespeare,  or  Shake-speare. 
There  is  no  such  historical  man — no  individual  known 
who  bore  that  name — and  the  inference  is  fair  that  the 
name  as  printed  upon  certain  poems  and  plays  was  a 
pseudonym,  like  that  of  "Mark  Twain"  or  of  "George 
Eliot".  Many  conjectures  have  been  ventured  as  to 
the  real  author,  but  there  have  never  been  proofs,  and 
the  right,  even  now,  in  1900,  remains  an  open  ques- 
tion. Nevertheless,  without  proof,  the  authorship  has 
been  attributed  to  a  player,  later  a  manager  in  and 
a  proprietor  of  a  London  theater,  one  William  Shak- 
sper, and  books  innumerable  have  been  written  on 
the  cool  assumption  that  he  was  the  man.  Now  the 
exposure  of  his  claim  is  the  object  of  this  writing. 


PART  I. 


SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 


CHAPTER    I. 

THE  FAMILY  OF  WII^IAM  SHAKSPER. 

The  family  of  the  player  were  known  to  their  neigh- 
bors as  Shaksper;  that  is,  the  first  syllable  had  the 
sound  of  back,  the  second  of  per,  e  short,  making 
Shaksper.  As  no  one  of  them  in  all  their  generations 
preceding  the  player  had  known  how  to  write,  there  is 
no  evidence  from  themselves  as  to  the  spelling  or  pro- 
nunciation of  the  name.  It  was  written  by  other 
persons,  however,  in  a  variety  of  forms,  but  almost 
always  expresses  the  sound  Shak-sper.  R.  G.  White 
has  given  thirty  of  these  forms,  and  other  authors 
have  collected  nearly  as  many  more. 

In  the  records  of  the  town  council  of  Stratford,  and 
of  the  Court  of  Records,  the  name  is  written  many 
times.  We  know  this  because  Halliwell-Phillipps  has 
printed  every  mention  of  John  Shaksper  which  has  been 
found.  In  his  pages  are  to  be  seen  Shaksper,  Shakys- 
per,  Shaxper,  Shaxpur,  Shaxysper,  Shexper,  Shakis- 
per,  Shakspeyr,  Shakgspeyr,  Shacksper,  Shaxpere, 
Shakspere,  Shaksbere,  Shakspear.  Mr.  Phillipps  gives 
many  f ac-similes  of  the  name  John  Shaksper  as  writ- 
ten. Also  of  Mary  Shaksper,  John's  wife,  and  one  of 

(7) 


8 


SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 


his  uncle,  Hary  Shaksper.  I  find  the  name  in  these 
fac-similes  thirty-eight  times.  We  have  Shakpeyr  or 
Shakkspeyr  fifteen  times.  Cut  i  shows  this  style  of 

signature: 

1. 


Nineteen  are  Shaksper,  Shakysper,  some  as  shown 
in  Cut  2  (the  last  letter  read  r  by  Phillipps): 


Others  end  in  the  ordinary  modern  r,  as  in  Cut  3: 
3. 


A  variation  of  the  r  in  3  is  shown  in  Cut  4,  page 
232.  Phillipps  reads  the  name  Shaky spere,  but  it  is 
nothing  otherwise  than  Shakysper: 

4. 


THK   FAMILY  OF  \v:i<UAM  SHAKSPKR.  9 

Others  have  the  terminal  r  in  the  German  form,  as 
seen  in  Cut  5,  taken  from  H.-P.,  u,  236: 


5. 


Phillipps  reads  this  letter  as  r,  but  the  same  letter 
written  by  a  rapid  or  an  inexpert  penman,  so  as  to 
open  and  become  like  a  w,  as  in  Cut  6  (n,  239),  he 

reads  re: 

6. 


There  are  a  few  signatures  where  the  r  (like  that  in 
Cut  3)  and  e,  each  distinct,  are  undoubtedly  blended 
into  one  character,  but  in  nearly  all  cases  the  final 
letter  is  merely  an  expanded  r.  If  the  scrivener  de- 
sired to  make  re,  with  a  German  r,  he  wrote  it  as  in 
Cut  7  (H.-P.,  n,  13),  each  letter  distinct: 

7. 


Another  fine  example  of  this  distinct  r  and  e  is  seen 
in   H.-P.,  n,  90.      Wherever  there   is   the   slightest 
flourish  at  the  extremity  of  the  r  (as,  for  example 
Cut  ^,  Phillipps  reads  the  letter  as  r  e,  for  it  would 


10         SHAKSPKR  NOT  SHAKESPKARK. 

be  painful  if  the  name  of  the  '  '  bard  of  our  admira- 
tion '  '  could  not  be  made  to  end  with  the  two  magical 
letters.  But  a  German  r,  wrhen  made  separately,  nat- 
urally carries  a  nourish  at  the  extremity,  as  seen  in 
Malone's  figure  of  that  letter  accompanying  his  fac- 
simile of  Shaksper's  signature  to  the  deed  of  1612, 
and  repeated  herein,  Chapter  XV.  Also  as  seen  in 
Cut  8,  an  enlarged  fac-simile  of  a  script  r  from  Wood- 
berry's  '  *  Method  of  learning  the  German  Lan- 

guage:" 

8. 


It  is  plain  that  the  German  r  carries  a  flourish  that 
has  sometimes  been  taken  for  an  e. 

The  use  of  the  German  r,  we  are  told,  was  com- 
mon among  scriveners  during  the  reigns  of  Elizabeth 
and  James  ;  but  that  it  was  also  used  half  a  century 
later  can  be  seen  in  the  fac-simile  of  John  Milton's 
contract  with  Samuel  Symons  for  the  sale  of  the 
manuscript  of  Paradise  Lost,  given  in  Pickering's 
edition  of  Milton's  Works,  Vol.  i.  In  this  the  Ger- 
man r  repeatedly  occurs  in  such  words  as  "  whereby", 
"  whereof",  and  "were",  followed  by  a  distinct  e  of 
the  same  species  as  the  one  which  precedes  the  r  in 
these  same  words.  Inasmuch  as  nearly,  if  not  quite 
all,  the  mentions  of  John  Shaksper's  name  occur  in 
the  records,  and  were  therefore  written  by  scriveners, 
the  larger  part  of  them  undoubtedly  ending  in  r,  as 
seen  in  cuts  1-4,  it  is  to  be  presumed  that  these 
sprawling  characters  spoken  of  were  intended  for  r 
also.  Fifteen  of  the  fac-similes  have  the  first  syllable 


THE   FAMILY   OF   WILLIAM   SHAKSPER.  II 

of  the  surname  Shax.  It  is  evident  that  John  was 
known  among  his  neighbors  as  Shaxper  or  Shaksper, 
and  nothing  else.  His  son  William,  therefore,  began 
life  as  William  Shaksper  or  Shaxper. 

R.  G.  White  says  :  ' '  The  name  sometimes  appears 
as  Chaksper  or  Shaksper.  It  is  possible  that  Shakes- 
peare is  a  corruption  of  some  name  of  a  more  peaceful 
meaning,  and  therefore  perhaps  of  humbler  deriva- 
tion." Dr.  Morgan  says  :  "  The  name  is  supposed  to 
have  been  simply  Jacques  Pierre  (John  Peter).  This 
Shak  is  the  present  mispronunciation  of  Jacques 
prevalent  in  Warwickshire. ' '  * 

Phillipps,  II,  59,  prints  a  letter  from  Abraham 
Sturley,  of  Stratford,  to  Richard  Quiney,  a  towns- 
man, living  in  London,  4th  November,  1598,  asking 
his  aid  in  getting  some  money  ' '  through  our  countri- 
man  Mr.  Wm.  Shak."  Shak  is  not  Shake,  and  the 
mention  shows  what  the  pronunciation  of  the  first 
syllable  of  the  player's  name  was.  This  sort  of  ab- 
breviation of  a  surname  is  not  uncommon  in  our 


*  "In  all  the  forms  (of  the  Shaksper  name)  tabulated  by  Wise, 
the  one  printed  on  the  title  pages  of  the  plays  and  poems 
"Shakespeare",  does  not  appear.  It  is  unique.  So  far  as  we 
know,  no  person  in  Stratford,  or  in  any  other  part  of  the  king- 
dom, previous  to  the  publication  of  the  Venus  and  Adonis, 
wrote  it  in  that  way.  Literature  had  an  absolute  monopoly 
of  it."  Reed,  13.  "  In  Grecian  mythology ,  Pallas  Athene  was  the 
goddess  of  wisdom,  philosophy,  poetry  and  the  fine  arts.  Her 
original  name  was  simply  Pallas,  a  word  derived  from  pellein, 
signifying  to  brandish  or  shake.  She  wras  generally  represented 
with  a  spear.  Athens,  the  home  of  the  drama,  was  under  the 
protection  of  this  Spear-shaker.  In  our  age  such  a  signature 
would  be  understood  at  once  as  a  pseudonym."  Id.  14. 


12  SHAKSPKR    NOT  SHAKKSPKARE). 

country  among  English  emigrants.  In  a  mining 
village  which  I  lived  in,  Billy  Clatworthy  went  by  the 
name  of  Billy  Clat ;  Mrs.  Cadwallader,  Mrs.  Cad  ; 
and  Mrs.  Shepherd,  Mrs.  Shep.  So,  to  a  Stratford 
man,  William  Shaksper  was  Wm.  Shak. 

William  Shaksper  was  the  son  of  John  Shaksper, 
who  in  his  younger  days  had  been  a  tenant  of  Robert 
Arden,  farmer.  After  Arden's  death,  John  married 
Mary,  his  daughter,  and  at  an  uncertain  date  removed 
to  Stratford-on-Avon,  where  he  practiced  the  trade  of 
a  butcher.  H.-P.  tells  us,  I,  35,  that  "  for  some  years 
subsequently  to  this  period  (his  removal)  John  Shak- 
sper was  a  humble  tradesman,  holding  no  conspicuous 
position  in  the  town".  Aubrey  says  that  John  was  a 
butcher,  and  that  young  William,  as  he  had  been  told 
by  some  of  the  neighbors,  "exercised  his  father's 
trade". 

Phillipps,  I,  178,  says  that  "both  families" — the 
Shakspers  and  the  Ardens — were  really  descended 
from  obscure  English  country  yeomen ;  and  on  page 
55,  "that  nearly  every  one  of  the  boys  connections  was 
a  farmer".  Again,  on  page  38,  that  "  both  parents 
were  absolutely  illiterate' ' .  As  it  was  then,  so  it  had 
ever  been,  always  peasants  or  obscure  country  yeomen. 
"For  years  the  European  world  grew  upon  a  single 
type,  in  which  the  forms  of  the  fathers'  thought  were 
the  forms  of  the  sons,  and  the  last  descendant  was 
occupied  in  treading  into  paths  the  foot-prints  of  his 
distant  ancestors."  Froude,  Hist.  Eng.,  I,  i. 

Dr.  Johnson  asserts  that  "in  the  time  of  Shakes- 
peare, the  lower  classes  were  but  just  emerging  from 
barbarity". 


THE    FAMILY    OF    WILLIAM    SHAKSPKR.  13 

"  The  inventory  of  Robert  Arden's  (father  to  Mary) 
goods  (H.-P.  says  he  was  a  farmer  and  nothing  more), 
which  was  taken  shortly  after  his  death,  in  1556, 
enables  us  to  realize  the  kind  of  life  that  was  followed 
by  the  poet's  mother  during  her  girlhood.  In  the 
total  absence  of  books  or  means  of  intellectual  educa- 
tion, her  requirements  must  have  been  restricted  to  an 
experimental  knowledge  of  matters  connected  with  the 
farm. 

' '  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  maiden  spent  most 
of  her  time  in  the  homeliest  of  rustic  employments; 
and  it  is  not  impossible  .  .  .  she  occasionally  as- 
sisted in  the  more  robust  occupations  of  the 
field.  .  .  .  Existence  was  passed  in  her  father's 
house  in  some  respects,  we  should  say,  rather  after 
the  manner  of  pigs  than  of  human  beings. 
There  were  no  table  knives,  no  forks,  no  crockery. 
The  food  was  manipulated  on  flat  pieces  of  stout  wood. 
The  means  of  ablution  were  lamentably  defective ; 
what  were  called  towels  were  merely  for  wiping  the 
hands  after  a  meal,  and  there  was  not  a  single  wash 
basin  in  the  establishment.  As  for  the  inmates  and 
other  laborers,  it  was  very  seldom  indeed,  if  ever,  that 
they  either  washed  their  hands  or  combed  their  hair. ' ' 
H.-P.,  28. 

It  is  necessary  to  call  attention  to  these  particulars 
that  the  early  familiarity  of  William  Shaksper  with 
the  ways  and  manners  of  gentlewomen,  not  to  speak 
of  ladies,  countesses,  duchesses,  princesses  and  queens, 
may  be  estimated.  His  wife  was  just  such  another 
rustic  as  his  mother,  yet  a  writer  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  for  December,  1897,  suggests  that  the  wife 


14  SHAKSPKR   NOT 

"served  as  raw  material  to  be  worked  up  into  Imo- 
genes  and  Rosalinds — enchanting  creatures' ' ! 

A  great  deal  of  labor  has  been  expended  in  an  effort 
to  make  the  Ardens  to  have  been  of  gentle  birth,  but  so 
high  an  authority  as  Dowden  is  compelled  to  say: 
'  'That  these  Ardens  were  connected  with  an  ancient 
family  of  gentle  folk  of  that  name  has  been  asserted, 
and  may  be  true,  but  the  statement  cannot  be  proved". 
•  "Stratford  then  contained  about  1800  inhabitants, 
who  dwelt  chiefly  in  thatched  cottages,  which 
straggled  over  the  ground,  etc.  The  streets  were 
foul  with  offal,  mud,  muck  heaps  and  reeking  stable 
refuse,  the  accumulation  of  which  the  town  ordinances 
and  the  infliction  of  which  fines  could  not  prevent, 
even  before  the  doors  of  the  better  sort  of  people." 
R.  G.  White,  21.  Cottages  of  that  day  in  Stratford 
consisted  of  mud  walls  and  a  thatched  roof.  See  H.- 
P-,  205. 

"At  this  period,  and  for  many  generations  after- 
wards, the  sanitary  condition  of  the  thoroughfares  of 
Stratford-on-Avon  was  simply  terrible  Streamlets  of 
a  water  power  sufficient  for  the  operation  of  corn  mills 
meandered  through  the  town.  .  .  .  Here  and 
there  small  middens  were  ever  in  the  course  of  accu- 
mulation, the  receptacles  of  offal  and  every  species  of 
nastiness.  A  regulation  for  the  removal  of  these  col- 
lections to  certain  specified  localities  interspersed 
through  the  borough,  and  known  as  common  dung- 
hills, appears  to  have  been  the  extent  of  the  interfer- 
ence that  the  authorities  ventured  or  cared  to  exercise 
in  such  matters.  Sometimes  when  the  nuisance  was 
thought  to  be  sufficiently  flagrant,  they  made  a  raid 


THE   FAMILY   OF   WIUJAM   SHAKSPER.  15 

on  those  inhabitants  who  had  suffered  their  refuse  to 
accumulate  largely  in  the  highways.  On  one  of  these 
occasions,  in  April,  1552,  John  Shaksper  was  amerced 
in  the  sum  of  twelve  pence  for  having  amassed  what  was 
no  doubt  a  conspicuous  sterquitiarium  before  his  house 
in  Henley  street;  and  under  these  unsavory  cir- 
cumstances does  the  history  of  the  poet's  father  com- 
mence in  the  records  of  England".  H.-P.,  I,  24. 
Garrick  described  Stratford-on-Avon  a  hundred  years 
later  (1769),  as  "the  most  dirty,  unseemly,  ill-paved, 
wretched-looking  town  in  all  Britain." 


1 6  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 


CHAPTER    II. 

AS    TO    THE    HOUSE    IN    WHICH    JOHN    SHAKSPER 
LIVED. 

I  quote  White's  "England  Without  and  Within," 
p.  526:  "Of  all  that  I  saw  connected  with  his  (William 
Shaksper)  memory,  his  house  was  the  most  disappoint- 
ing; and  more,  it  was  sad,  depressing.  The  house 
had  recently  been  'restored/  and  so  destroyed.  Its 
outside  has  an  air  of  newness  that  is  positively  of- 
fensive. All  expression  of  rural  antiquity  has  been 
scraped  and  painted,  and  roofed,  and  clap-boarded  out 
of  it. 

"Within,  however,  not  much  of  this  smoothing  has 
been  done.  My  heart  sank  within  me  as  I  looked 
around  upon  the  rude,  mean  dwelling-place  of  him 
who  had  filled  the  world  with  the  splendor  of  his  im- 
aginings. It  is  called  a  house,  and  any  building  in- 
tended for  a  dwelling-place  is  a  house;  but  the  interior 
of  this  one  is  hardly  that  of  a  rustic  cottage;  it  is 
almost  that  of  a  hovel,  poverty-stricken,  squalid,  ken- 
nel-like. A  house  so  cheerless  and  comfortless  I  had 
not  seen  in  rural  England.  The  poorest,  meanest 
farm-house  that  I  had  ever  entered  in  New  England  or 
on  lyong  Island  was  a  more  cheerful  habitation.  And 
amid  these  sordid  surroundings  William  Shakespeare 
grew  to  manhood.  .  .  .  Then  for  the  first  time  I 
knew  and  felt  from  how  low  a  condition  of  life  Shake- 
peare  had  arisen.  For  his  family  were  not  reduced  to 


HOUSE   IN   WHICH   JOHN   SHAKSPKR   LIVED.         17 

this;  they  had  risen  to  it.  This  was  John  Shaksper's 
home  in  the  days  of  his  brief  prosperity.  .  .  . 
The  upper  part  of  the  house,  to  which  you  climb  by  a 
little  rude  stairway  that  is  hardly  good  enough  for  a 
decent  stable,  has  been  turned  into  a  museum  of 
doubtful  relics  and  gimcracks,  and  is  made  as  unlike 
as  possible  what  it  must  have  been  when  Shakespeare 
lived  there.  There  is  very  little  of  this  museum  that 
is  worth  attention,  but  there  is  one  object  of  some  in- 
terest. It  is  a  letter  written  to  Wm.  Shackspere  by 
Richard  Quiney,  of  Stratford,  asking  for  a  loan  of 
money.  This  scrap  of  paper  has  the  distinction  of 
being  the  only  existing  thing,  except  his  will,  that  we 
know  must  have  been  in  Shakespeare's  hands,  for  as 
to  the  Florio  Montaigne,  others  whose  judgment  on 
such  a  point  is  worth  mine  ten  times  over,  think,  as  I 
do,  that  it  is  a  forgery." 

Further:  "To  Anne  Hathaway's  cottage  at  Shottery 
I  went,  taking  the  path  through  the  fields  which 
Shakespeare  took  too  often  for  his  happiness.  There 
is  little  to  be  said  about  this  house,  which  is  merely  a 
thatched  cottage  of  the  same  grade  as  the  house  in 
Henley  street — in  its  original  condition  a  picturesque 
object  in  a  landscape,  but  the  lowliest  sort  of  human 
habitation.  I  sat  upon  the  settle  by  the  great  fire- 
place, where  the  wonderful  boy  of  eighteen  was  en- 
snared by  the  woman  of  twenty-six.  I  could  not  help 
but  think  of  the  toil,  the  wretchedness,  the  perplexity, 
and  the  shame  that  were  born  to  him  beneath  that 
roof.  .  .  .  Thus  ended  my  visit  to  Stratford-on- 
Avon,  where  I  advise  no  one  to  go  who  would  preserve 
any  elevated  idea  connected  with  Shakespeare's  per- 


1 8  SHASKPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE). 

sonality.  ...  It  was  with  a  sense  of  mingled 
gloom  and  wrong  of  rightful  expectation  that  I  turned 
my  back  upon  Stratford-on-Avon. ' ' 

[Mrs.  Dall  assures  her  readers  that  Halliwell-Phil- 
lipps  "is  the  highest  authority  in  all  that  concerns  the 
life  of  William  Shakespeare",  meaning  William  Shak- 
sper,  of  Stratford.  Mr.  Phillipps  tells  us  that  John 
Shaksper  and  Mary,  his  wife,  "were  really  descended 
from  obscure  yeomen",  and  that  "both  were  absolutely 
illiterate."  Further,  that  John  began  life  in  Stratford 
"as  an  humble  tradesman",  either  a  butcher  or  a  wool 
dealer,  or  both.  Yet  Mrs.  Dall  can  say:  "As  to  his 
(William  Shaksper' s)  social  station,  it  was  that  to 
which  New  England  is  indebted  for  her  best  citizens — 
for  the  Winthrops,  the  Peabodys,  the  Rogerses,  and 
Lawrences  and  the  Appletons" — which  certainly  is 
mighty  hard  on  the  Winthrops,  etc.  Undoubtedly 
some  of  the  men  and  women  who  emigrated  to  New 
England  after  1620  were  of  the  station  to  which  John 
Shaksper  belonged,  absolutely  illiterate,  obscure  yeo- 
men, or  humble  tradesmen,  but  it  was  a  far  cry  from 
them  to  the  Winthrops  and  Appletons.  One  set  was 
at  the  bottom,  the  mud  sills,  the  other  was  the  top  of 
the  structure.  Dr.  Leonard  Bacon  says:  "The  princi- 
pal planters  of  Massachusetts  were  English  country 
gentlemen  of  no  inconsiderable  fortune,  of  enlarged 
understanding  improved  by  liberal  education' ' . 

Dr.  Byington  also  adds  his  testimony:  "The  Puri- 
tans who  came  to  Massachusetts  Bay  were,  for  the 
most  part,  in  comfortable  circumstances  at  home,  with 
good  education  and  with  good  social  connections  in 


HOUSE    IN    WHICH    JOHN    SHAKSPER    LIVED.          1 9 

England;    and  an  unusual  proportion  of  them  were 
graduates  from  English  Universities." 

Mrs.  Dall  heads  her  list  of  authorities  for  the  life  of 
William  Shaksper  with  Charles  Knight's  "Life  of 
Shakespeare", — a  work  of  imagination  strictly,  built 
up  to  suit  the  man  who,  he  thinks,  wrote  the  Shakes- 
peare plays,  but  without  one  historical  fact  to  sup- 
port it.] 


20  SHAKSPER    NOT    SHAKESPEARE. 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE  SCHOOL  ADVANTAGES  OF  THE  BOY  WILLIAM. 

"It  must  have  been  about  this  period,  1568,  that 
Shakespeare  (Shaksper)  entered  into  the  mysteries  of 
the  horn-book  and  the  A,  B,  C.  Although  both  his 
parents  were  absolutely  illiterate,  they  had  the  sagacity 
to  appreciate  the  importance  of  an  education  for  their 
son,  and  the  poet,  somehow  or  other,  was  taught  to 
read  and  write,  the  necessary  preliminaries  to  admis- 
sion into  the  Free  Schools.  There  were  few  persons  in 
Stratford  capable  of  initiating  him  even  into  these  pre- 
paratory accomplishments",  etc.  H.-P.,  I,  38.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  there  is  no  proof  whatever  that  William 
ever  went  to  any  sort  of  school,  or  ever  learned  to 
read;  and  as  to  his  illiterate  parents  having  the  sagacity 
to  appreciate  the  importance  of  his  learning,  the  prob- 
ability is  that  as  became  such  illiterate  people,  they 
cared  nothing  about  it.  The  Shakspers  had  got  on 
very  well  so  far  without  that  accomplishment.  '  'Al- 
though there  is  no  certain  information  on  the  sub- 
ject, it  may  perhaps  be  assumed  that  at  this  time 
boys  usually  entered  the  free  schools  at  the  age  of 
seven.  ...  If  so,  unless  its  system  of  instruc- 
tion differed  essentially  from  that  pursued  in  other 
establishments  of  a  similar  character,  his  earliest 
knowledge  of  L,atin  was"  derived  from  two  well-known 
books  of  the  time,  the  'Accidence',  and  the  'Senten- 
tiae  Pueriles',  The  best  authorities  unite  in  telling  us 


SCHOOL  ADVANTAGES   OF   THE   BOY   WILLIAM.     21 

that  the  poet"  (i.  e.,  player  Shaksper)  "imbibed  a 
certain  amount  of  Latin  at  school,  but  that  his  ac- 
quaintance with  that  language  was,  throughout  his 
life,  of  a  very  limited  character.  It  is  not  probable 
that  scholastic  learning  was  ever  congenial  to  his 
tastes,  and  it  should  be  recollected  that  books  in  most 
parts  of  the  country  were  then  of  very  rare  occur- 
rence. Lily's  Grammar  and  a  few  classical  works, 
chained  to  the  desks  of  the  free  schools,  were  prob- 
ably the  only  volumes  of  the  kind  to  be -found  at 
Stratford-on-Avon.  Exclusive  of  Bibles,  Church 
Services,  Psalters  and  education  manuals,  there  were 
certainly  not  more  than  two  or  three  dozen  books,  if 
so  many,  in  the  whole  town.  The  copy  of  the  black- 
letter  English  History,  so  often  depicted  as  well 
thumbed  by  Shakespeare  in  his  father's  parlor,  never 
existed  out  of  the  imagination."  H.-P.,  I,  53. 
This  disposes  of  Charles  Knight's  figment:  "In  the 
humble  home  of  Shakespeare's  boyhood,  there  was  in 
all  probability  to  be  found  a  thick,  squat,  folio  volume, 
then  some  thirty  years  printed,  in  which  might  be 
read,  'What  misery,  what  murder!  and  what  execrable 
plagues  this  famous  region  hath  suffered  by  the  divi- 
sion and  dissensions  of  the  renowned  houses  of  Lan- 
caster and  York'.  This  book  was  Hall's  Chronicle." 

R.  G.  White  says  of  that  school  and  of  boy  Shaksper: 
"He  could  have  learned  Latin,  and  some  Greek;  some 
English,  too,  but  not  much,  for  English  was  held  in 
scorn  by  the  scholars  of  those  days,  and  long  after' ' . 
Dr.  Morgan  says:  "Children  in  those  days  were  put  at 
their  hie,  h&c,  hoc,  at  an  age  when  we  send  them  to  the 


22  SHAKSF3R   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

kindergarten.  But  no  master  ever  dreamed  of  drilling 
them  in  their  own  vernacular. ' ' 

'  'A  maximum  of  caning  and  a  minimum  of  parrot- 
work  in  desultory  Latin  paradigms,  which,  whether 
wrong  or  right,  were  of  no  consequence  whatever 
to  anybody,  was  the  village  idea  of  a  boy's  edu- 
cation in  Kngland  for  long  centuries,  easily  inclusive 
of  the  years  within  which  William  Shakspeare  lived 
and  died.  The  greatest  scholars  of  those  centuries 
either  educated  themselves,  or  by  learned  parents  were 
guided  to  the  sources  of  human  intelligence  and  ex- 
perience. At  any  rate,  they  drew  nothing  out  of  the 
country  grammar  schools. ' '  * 

That  William  Shaksper  attended  the  free  school  at 
Stratford,  or  any  other  school,  is  a  conjecture  on  the 
part  of  his  biographers.  The  common  people  of  En- 
gland at  that  period,  and  all  through  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth,  were  illiterate,  "gross  and  dark",  in  the 
words  of  Dr.  Johnson.  In  his  preface  to  Shake- 
speare, 1765,  Dr.  Johrison  asserts  that  in  the  time  of 
Shakespeare,  "to  be  able  to  read  and  write,  outside 
of  professed  scholars,  or  men  and  women  of  high  rank, 
was  an  accomplishment  still  valued  for  its  rarity." 
What  writing  was  necessary  for  such  people,  letters, 

*  ' '  The  annual  charge  on  the  town  of  Stratford  for  support  of 
its  grammar  schools  was,  in  1568,  ,£20.13.;  £20  of  which  was  for 
the  salary  of  the  master  and  his  assistants.  The  pay  of  the  su- 
perintendent was  eight  pence  or  at  the  rate  of  one-sixth  of  a 
penny  a  week.  These  figures  seem  to  suggest  that  the  grammar 
school  could  not  have  been  on  the  extensive  scale  which  is  predi- 
cated for  it  on  the  intellectual  output  of  one  of  its  pupils." 
Morgan,  A  Study,  etc..  4th  Ed.,  p.  440. 


SCHOOL   ADVANTAGES   OF  THK  BOY  WIIJJAM.      23 

accounts  or  other,  was  done  by  a  professional  class, 
the  scriveners.  Mr.  Phillipps,  I,  33,  tells  us  that  <(in 
March,  1565,  John  Shaksper,  with  the  assistance  of 
his  former  colleague  in  the  same  office,  made  up  the 
accounts  of  the  Chamberlains  of  the  borough  for  the 
year.  Neither  of  these  worthies  could  even  write 
their  own  names;  but  nearly  all  tradesmen  reckoned 
with  counters,  the  results  on  important  occasions  being 
entered  by  professional  scriveners. ' '  Of  nineteen  al- 
dermen and  burgesses  of  Stratford-on-Avon,  only  six 
could  write  their  names.  (See  fac-simile  in  H.-P.,  I, 
40.) 

Lee  asserts,  5,  that  "when  attesting  documents  he 
(John  Shaksper)  occasionally  made  his  mark,  but  there 
is  evidence  in  the  Stratford  archives  that  he  could  write 
with  facility." 

Mr.  Lee  must  claim  for  John  the  various  copies  of 
his  name  contained  in  H.-P.,  and  of  which  I  have  be- 
fore given  several  examples.  If  so,  John  had  as  won- 
derful a  handwriting  as  his  son  William,  whose  name 
is  never  written  twice  in  the  same  style.  A  man  who 
can  write  does  not  use  a  mark  in  place  of  his  name  in 
attesting  documents,  or  at  all. 

Halliwell-Phillipps  personally  investigated  all  the 
accessible  records  of  Stratford  for  the  period  of  John 
Shaksper 's  residence  in  that  town,  and  in  his  volumes 
has  given  fac-similes  of  every  mention  of  John's 
name,  often  with  a  good  deal  of  the  context.  He  de- 
clares positively  that  John  could  not  write,  and  that 
he  made  his  signature  with  a  mark.*  Unless  Mr.  Lee 

*  ' '  There  is  no  reasonable  pretense  for  assuming  that,  in  the 
time  of  John  Shakespeare,  whatever  may  have  been  the  case  at 


24  SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

produces  satisfactory  evidence  to  the  contrary — some- 
thing more  than  his  own  mere  dictum — John  must  be 
held  to  have  been  an  illiterate. 

In  1894,  Dr.  Rolfe  ran  a  series  of  four  papers  through 
the  pages  of  the  "  Youth's  Companion'',  for  the  in- 
struction of  American  young  people,  entitled  "Shake- 
speare, the  Boy' ' ,  handsomely  illustrated.  Of  course, 
as  no  particulars  whatever  have  come  down  to  this  age 
respecting  the  boy  William  Shaksper,  except  the  date 
of  his  baptism,  in  the  Stratford  church  register,  every 
word  of  Dr.  Rolfe's  account  is  spun  from  his  own  im- 
agination, and  it  consists  of  what  Mr.  Fleay  calls 
' '  fanciful  might-have-beens' ' . 

No.  i  sets  off  with  a  cut  of  a  finely  dressed  boy  of 
eight  or  nine  years,  hands  in  jacket  pocket,  chin  in  air, 
apparently  posing  as  one  absorbed  in  contemplation  of 
nature.  The  adjacent  text  describes  at  some  length 
the  beautiful  scenery  of  Warwickshire.  Dr.  Rolfe 
thinks  the  boy's  delight  in  out-door  life  (because  the 
plays  show  that  the  author  of  them  delighted  in  that) , 
' '  may  have  been  intensified  by  the  experience  of  the 
house  in  Henley  street,  with  the  reeking  pile  of  filth 
at  the  front  door" — the  sterquinarium  we  have  before 
heard  of.  ' '  His  poetry  is  everywhere  full  of  beauty 
and  fragrance  of  the  flowers  that  bloom  in  and  about 

earlier  periods,  it  was  the  practice  for  marks  to  be  used  by  those 
1  who  were  capable  of  signing  their  names.  No  instance  of  the 
kind  has  ever  been  discovered  among  the  numerous  records  of 
his  era  that  are  preserved  at  Stratford-on-Avon,  while  even  a 
few  rare  examples  in  other  districts,  if  such  are  to  be  found, 
would  be  insufficient  to  countenance  a  theory  that  he  was  able 
to  write.  All  the  known  instances  point  in  the  opposite  direc- 
tion." H-P.  ii,  369. 


SCHOOL   ADVANTAGES   OF   THE)   BOY   WILLIAM.      25 

Stratford;  and  the  wonderful  accuracy  of  his  allusions 
to  them  .  .  .  shows  how  thoroughly  at  home  he 
was  with  them,  how  intensely  he  loved  and  studied 
them."  I  notice  in  passing  that  the  worshipers  of  the 
Stratford  man  find  it  convenient  to  overlook  the  fact 
that  the  flowers  which  ' '  bloom  in  and  around  Strat- 
ford" bloom  as  well  in  all  the  shires  of  Southern  Eng- 
land. "These  facts  do  not  prove  that  he  (Shaksper) 
was  ever  a  botanist  or  a  gardener.  Neither  are  his 
numerous  allusions  to  wild  flowers  and  plants,  not  one 
of  which  appears  to  be  peculiar  to  Warwickshire,  evi- 
dences". H.-P.,  I,  136. 

No.  2  describes  a  grammar  school  of  that  day — any 
one — and  gives  cuts  of  the  ancient  school  room  of 
Stratford,  and  a  horn-book.  Dr.  Rolfe  thinks  this 
boy  went  to  school  when  he  was  seven  years  old  and 
left  at  thirteen,  but  it  is  all  conjecture,  as  I  have 
already  said.  "How  William  liked  going  to  school 
we  do  not  know,  but  if  we  are  to  judge  from  his  refer- 
ences to  school  boys  and  school  masters,  he  had  little 
taste  for  it.  As  Jonson  says,  Shakespeare  had  little 
Latin  and  less  Greek".  (This  little  Latin  does  not 
apply  very  well  to  the  boy  who  came  in  manhood  to 
be  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  for  he  was  a 
profound  Latin  scholar,  as  the  plays  themselves  bear 
witness,  but  it  will  do  as  applied  to  the  boy  Shaksper. ) 

Nos.  3  and  4  describe  the  life  of  a  well  brought  up 
boy,  son  of  a  nobleman  or  gentleman,  and  the  games 
and  pastimes  of  boys  in  general;  and  a  cut  is  given  of 
an  ideal  Henley  street,  swept  and  garnished,  with  half 
a  dozen  nicely  dressed  boys  at  play,  in  spruce  jackets 
and  turned  down  linen  collars,  their  faces  washed  and 


26  SHAKSPKR   NOT 

noses  clean.  Needless  to  say,  boy  William  Shaksper 
could  not  have  appeared  in  that  garb,  any  more  than 
filthy  Henley  street  could  have  shone  with  cleanliness. 
The  real  boys  in  1574,  one  and  all,  must  have  been 
gutter-snipes,  in  smock  frocks  and  fustian  breeches. 
I  present  a  cut  of  the  Stratford  boy  of  that  age,  very 
likely  William  Shaksper  himself.  What  makes  me 
think  it  is  the  real  William  is  that  he  seems  to  be  an- 
ticipating his  career  as  a  jig  dancer,  under  the  instruc- 
tion of  Kempe,  to  be  hereafter  spoken  of.  He  does 
not  look  as  if  he  would  develop  into  "the  bard  of  our 
admiration." 


In  1896,  Dr.  Rolfe  published  a  volume  of  upwards 
of  200  pages,  with  the  same  title,  ' '  Shakespeare  the 


SCHOOL   ADVANTAGES   OF  THE  BOY  WIIJJAM.       27 

Boy",  made  up  from  the  Youth's  Companion  papers, 
extended  and  padded  immensely.  On  the  cover 
and  also  within  are  the  bogus  arms  of  John  Shake- 
speare, which  were  applied  for  by  player  William  on 
two  several  occasions,  under  cover  of  his  father' s  name, 
with  a  vast  deal  of  lying,  but  which  were  never  granted 


to  either  John  Shaksper  or  William.  The  meaning  of 
these  (bogus)  arms  of  the  father  on  and  in  this  book, 
is  to  make  it  evident  that  the  boy  William  came  of  a 
race  of  gentlemen,  and  was  brought  up  as  the  son  of  a 


28  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE}. 

gentleman.  The  frontispiece  represents  a  beautiful 
boy  of  eight  or  nine  years,  with  a  face  that  never  could 
have  grown  into  the  vacuous  one  of  the  Droeshout  por- 
trait, the  only  authentic  likeness  of  William  Shaksper, 
and  dressed  like  a  young  nobleman.  I  copy  this  re- 
markable picture,  which  apparently  has  been  composed 
from  the  likenesses  of  John  Milton  *  and  Philip  Sydney. 
(See  cut,  preceding  page.) 

Dress  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  the  centuries 
before  that,  "was  the  symbol  of  rank";  and  for  the 
son  of  a  "humble  tradesman"  to  be  decked  in  the  style 
of  Rolfe's  boy  wras  impossible,  and  no  one  knows  this 
better  than  the  learned  Doctor  himself. 

In  another  picture  this  young  person  is  portrayed  as 
standing  by  the  Avon,  fishing-pole  in  hand,  not  as  a 
Stratford  fishing  boy,  breeches  soiled  and  mouth  full 
of  worms,  but  like  a  gentleman,  in  full  dress,  even  to 
trunk  hose — in  fact  a  I2mo  edition  of  the  great  Karl 
of  Leicester. 

The  text  is  as  misleading  as  the  plates.  To  quote 
the  fancies  of  Charles  Knight's  "mischievously  fertile 
imagination",  borrowing  one  of  Mr.  Fleay's  phrases 
again,  as  fact,  when  Dr.  Rolfe  knows,  none  better, 
that  there  is  not  a  particle  of  fact  in  them,  any  more 
than  in  the  fancies  of  Sinbad  the  Sailor,  how  shall  it 
be  characterized?  Hear  him:  "'He  had',  says  this 
genial  biographer,  'a  copy  well-thumbed  from  his 
first  reading  days  of  The  Palace  of  Pleasure,  by 
William  Paynter.  In  this  work  was  set  forth  'the 

*When  a  boy,  Milton  was  remarkable  for  beauty,  "delicate 
complexion,  clear  blue  eyes,  and  light-brown  hair  flowing  down 
his  shoulders."  That  is  the  little  man  Rolfe  has  captured. 


SCHOOI,   ADVANTAGES   OF   THE    BOY   WIWJAM.        29 

great  valiance  of  noble  gentlemen',  etc.  'Pleasant 
little  apothegms  and  short  fables  were  there  in  the 
book  which  the  brothers  and  sisters  of  William  Shake- 
spear  (Shaksper)  had  heard  him  tell  with  marvelous 
spirit.  There  was  another  collection  too,  which  that 
youth  had  diligently  read — the  Gesta  Romanorum, 
old  legends,"  etc.,  etc.  But  beyond  these  our 
Mammilius  had  many  a  tale  of  spirits  and  gob- 
lins, etc.  But  the  youth  had  met  with  the  his- 
tory of  the  murder  of  Duncan,  the  King  of  Scot- 
land, in  a  chronicle  older  than  Holinshed,'  "  etc.,  ad 
nauseam.  All  this  in  the  face  of  the  declarations  of 
Halliwell-Phillipps,  whom  Dr.  Rolfe,  p.  217,  speaks  of 
as  one  of  the  most  careful  and  conservative  critics,  and 
who  is  styled  by  nearly  all  of  the  modern  commenta- 
tors or  biographers,  the  one  great  authority  for  the 
facts  of  William  Shaksper' s  life.  Wherein  do  such 
misrepresentations  of  the  facts  of  William  Shaksper' s 
boyhood  differ  from  the  Ireland  forgeries,  and  the 
Collier  frauds! 

John  Shaksper,  "after  his  marriage,  speculated  in 
wool,  and  dealt  in  corn  and  other  articles."  H.-P.  I, 
30.  Notwithstanding  his  inability  to  read  and  write, 
he  had  more  or  less  capacity  for  business,  which,  as 
we  shall  see,  his  son  William  inherited,  manifesting  it 
in  a  greatly  increased  degree.  John  '  'was  expert  at 
reckoning  with  counters",  Mr.  Phillipps  says,  I,  33, 
and  was  able  to  '  'make  up  the  accounts  of  the  Chamber- 
lains of  the  borough' ' .  He  came  in  time  to  fill  every 
office  in  his  town  from  ale-taster  and  constable,  to 
chamberlain,  alderman  and  bailiff,  the  last  highest  of 
all,  with  limited  magisterial  powers.  In  a  village  of 


30  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

poor  cottagers,  all  alike  illiterate,  he  doubtless  sur- 
passed his  neighbors  in  business  faculty.  Among  the 
blind  the  one-eyed  man  is  king.  At  any  rate  he 
showed  a  willingness  to  serve  the  public;  but  he  some- 
how so  managed  his  private  affairs,  that  he  soon  ran 
through  what  little  property  himself  and  his  wife  had. 
He  seems  also  to  have  been  a  man  fond  of  litigation, 
another  trait  his  son  William  inherited.  But  John 
had  his  pain  from  this  source  as  well  as  his  pleasure. 
"  His  name  is  very  often  on  the  court  records,  gaining 
and  losing  suits".  H.-P.,  II,  217,  et  seq.  This  was 
as  early  as  1558.  But  on  June  19,  1576,  the  return 
made  to  a  suit  to  distrain  goods  on  his  land  was  that 
he  had  nothing  that  could  be  distrained.  On  March 
29,  1577,  he  produced  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus  in  the 
Stratford  court  of  record,  which  showed  that  he  had 
been  in  custody  or  prison,  probably  for  debt."  Furni- 
vall,  preface  to  the  Leopold  Shakespeare.  In  1592, 
he  was  one  of  nine  persons  '  'who  came  not  to  church 
for  fear  of  prison  for  debt."  H.-P.,  II,  146. 

At  the  time  of  the  habeas  corpus  matter,  the  boy 
William  was  thirteen  years  old.  H.-P.,  5,  says:  "In 
all  probability,  he  (John)  removed  the  future  drama- 
tist from  school  when  the  latter  was  about  thirteen' ' ; 
and  on  p.  56,  we  are  told  that,  "the  defective  classical 
education  of  the  poet"  (/.  e.  of  player  Shaksper),  "was 
really  owing  to  his  being  removed  from  school  before 
the  usual  age,  his  father  requiring  his  assistance  in  one 
of  the  branches  of  the  Henley  street  business. "- 
Id,  32. 

At  Stratford-on-Avon,  the  guide  shows  to  the  ad- 
miring stranger  the  very  desk  at  which  boy  William 


SCHOOL  ADVANTAGES   OF   THE   BOY   WILLIAM.      31 

studied.  I  read  in  a  recent  paper:  "Of  the  few 
genuine  relics  of  Shakspere  preserved  in  his  native 
town,  the  most  interesting  are  his  signet  ring  and  the 
desk  at  which  he  sat  in  the  grammar  school.  ..." 
Per  contra,  Dr.  Rolfe,  in  the  Youth's  Companion 
papers  before  quoted,  on  describing  the  school-room, 
says:  "A  desk,  said  with  no  authority  whatever,  to 
have  been  used  by  Shakspere,  is  preserved  in  the 
Henley  street  house." 

William  Winter,  "Shakespeare's  England,"  ed. 
1896,  p.  137,  says  of  this  ring:  "Here  likewise  is 
shown  a  gold  seal  ring  found  many  years  ago  in  a 
field  near  Stratford  Church,  on  which  delicately  en- 
graved appear  the  letters  W.  S.  It  may  have  belonged 
to  Shakespeare.  The  conjecture  is  that  it  did."* 

The  question  is  pertinent,  who  had  that  ring  made 
and  threw  it  into  the  field  ?  There  are  so  many  for- 
geries in  the  cause  of  William  Shaksper,  that  authen- 
tication is  called  for,  as  well  in  the  case  of  rings  as  of 
portraits,  signatures,  letters,  etc.  The  rule  is  never 
to  trust  an  uuauthenticated  assertion  concerning  Wil- 
liam Shaksper  made  by  one  of  his  devotees. 

Whatever  the  boy  may  have  learned  at  school,  if  he 
really  went  to  school,  he  did  not  learn  to  write  his  own 
name,  as  I  shall  hereinafter  show  (Chap.  XVI). 
That  William  Shaksper,  player,  manager,  proprietor 
of  a  theater,  and  active  business  man,  could  at  any 

*  Gerald  Massey,  The  Secret  Drama  of  the  Shakespeare 
Sonnets,  1888,  p.  86,  has  no  doubt  as  to  this  ring.  "It  is  a 
fact  still  more  interesting  that  the  seal-ring  of  Shakespeare,  now 
preserved  at  Stratford,  the  seal  he  used  to  seal  his  letters  with, 
shows  the  true  lover's  knot  entwining  about  his  initials,  W.  S." 


32         SHAKSPKR  NOT  SHAKESPKARK. 

time  in  his  life  use  a  pen  at  all,  is  more  than  doubtful. 
Whatever  writing  was  necessary  must  have  been  done 
for  him  by  other  hands.  That  need  not  be  surprising. 
Writing  as  we  have  seen  was  at  that  period  a  rare  ac- 
complishment, one  rarely  found  among  the  class  to 
which  William  Shaksper  belonged.  John  Shaksper 
was  innocent  of  the  art,  and  yet  he  filled  successively 
all  the  offices  of  the  town  of  Stratford,  made  up  the 
town  accounts,  and  performed  the  duties  of  a  magis- 
trate. His  writing  was  done  by  him  by  official  clerks — 
scriveners. 


THE;  YOUTH  OF  WILUAM  SHAKSPISR.  33 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  YOUTH  OF  WILLIAM  SHAKSPER. 

"All  that  can  be  prudently  said  is  that  the  inclina-. 
tion  of  the  testimonies  leans  toward  the  belief  that  John 
Shakspere  eventually  apprenticed  his  eldest  son  to  a 
butcher."  H.-P.,  I,  57.  The  Stratford  tradition, 
first  mentioned  by  Aubrey  (about  1680),  was,  that 
"William's  father  was  a  Butcher,  and  I  have  been  told 
heretofore  by  some  of  the  neighbors,  that  when  he  was 
a  boy  he  exercised  his  father's  Trade,  but  when  he 
kill'd  a  Calfe  he  would  do  it  in  a  high  style,  and  make 
a  Speech.  There  was  at  that  time  another  Butcher's 
son  in  this  towne  that  was  held  not  at  all  inferior  to 
him  for  a  natural  witt,  his  acquaintance  and  coetanean, 
but  dyed  young".  Ingleby,  383.  On  this  and.  the 
rest  of  Aubrey's  account  (relating  to  a  later  period), 
H.-P.  says,  preface:  "Very  meagre,  indeed,  are  the 
fragments  of  information  to  be  safely  collected  from 
Aubrey,  but  every  word  in  the  next  traditional  narra- 
tive is  to  be  received  with  respect  as  a  faithful  record 
of  the  local  belief.  That  account  is  preserved  in  min- 
utes respecting  Shakespeare  (Shaksper)  which  were 
compiled  by  a  traveler  who  paid  a  visit  to  the  Church 
of  Stratford-on-Avon  in  the  year  1693.  His  inform- 
ant was  one  William  Castle,  then  the  parish  clerk  and 
sexton,  a  person  who  could  have  had  no  motive  for 
deception  in  such  matters' ' .  The  account  spoken  of 
is  found  in  a  letter  from  the  Rev.  Mr.  Dowdall  to 


34  SHAKSPKR    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

Kdw.  Southwell,  and  the  original  was  in  Halliwell- 
Phillipps'  possession.  It  is  dated  April  10,  1693,  and 
runs  as  follows  (Ingleby,  417) :  '  'The  first  remarkable 
place  in  this  County  that  I  visited  was  Stratford  super 
Avon,  where  I  saw  the  effigies  of  our  English  trage- 
dian, Mr.  Shakespeare.  .  .  .  The  clerk  that  showed 
me  this  church  is  above  80  years  old;  he  says  that  this 
Shakespear  was  formerly  in  this  town  bound  appren- 
tice to  a  butcher,  but  that  he  ran  from  his  master  to 
lyondon,  and  was  there  received  into  the  playhouse  as 
a  servitour,  and  by  this  means  had  an  opportunity  to 
be  what  he  afterwards  proved.  He  was  the  best  of 
his  family,"  etc. 

Phillipps  says  (I,  53):  "The  tradition  reported  by 
the  parish  clerk  in  1693  is  tne  on^Y  known  evidence  of 
Shakespeare's  having  been  an  apprentice,  but  his  as- 
sertion that  the  poet  commenced  his  practical  life  as  a 
butcher  is  supported  by  the  earlier  testimony  of 
Aubrey".  This  clerk,  above  80  years  old  in  1693, 
was  a  child  when  William  Shaksper  died,  1616;  and, 
living  in  the  parish,  of  course  he  had  known  hundreds 
of  men  and  women  who  were  personally  acquainted 
with  the  player,  boy  and  man.  The  phenomenal 
Shaksper,  who  ran  away  in  poverty,  and  who  returned 
to  Stratford  the  richest  man  of  the  town,  would  be  the 
subject  of  wonder  and  gossip  in  Stratford,  not  only  so 
long  as  he  lived,  but  so  long  as  any  one  lived  there 
who  had  known  him,  or  so  long  as  any  of  his  de- 
scendants lived  there.  The  clerk's  testimony,  there- 
fore, is  of  the  utmost  importance,  and  exceeds  in  value 
that  of  any  other  individual  of  whom  the  books  speak 
in  connection  with  the  history  of  young  William 


THE   YOUTH    OF   WIIJJAM   SHAKSPER.  35 

Shaksper.  He  is  an  unimpeachable  witness;  his  in- 
telligence and  respectability  are  vouched  for  by  his 
official  position. 

Mr.  Dowdall  does  not  speak  of  Mr.  Shakspere,  the 
author  of  certain  famous  poems  and  plays,  but  the 
"tragedian" — the  player — and  plainly  the  clerk  knew 
Shaksper  simply  as  a  player  and  rich  man. 

There  is  no  getting  rid  of  the  butcher  business, 
though  it  is  very  distasteful  to  the  Shaksperians. 
Betterton,  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century 
(who  posed  as  a  natural  son  of  player  Shaksper,  with- 
out the  least  authority,  the  commentators  agree),  gave 
out  that  the  boy  Shaksper  was  brought  up  in  the  wool 
business,  a  thing  he  personally  knew  nothing  about. 
But  the  testimony  of  the  parish  clerk,  taken  together 
with  that  of  Aubrey,  settles  the  matter.  Boy  Shak- 
sper was  brought  up  as  a  butcher. 

'  'Although  the  information  at  present  accessible  does 
not  enable  us  to  determine  the  exact  nature  of  Shakes- 
peare's (Shaksper' s)  occupations  from  his  fourteenth 
year  to  his  eighteenth,  that  is  to  say,  from  1577  to 
1582,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  was  mercifully  re- 
leased from  what,  to  a  spirit  like  his,  must  have  been 
the  deleterious  monotony  of  a  school  education. 
Whether  he  passed  those  years  as  a  butcher  or  a  wool 
dealer  does  not  greatly  matter".  H.-P.,  I,  58.  And 
this  author  goes  on  to  say  that  in  either  capacity  he 
was  acquiring  a  more  perfect  knowledge  of  the  world 
and  human  nature  than  could  have  been  derived  from 
a  study  of  the  classics.  According  to  the  traditions, 
he  sowed  wild  oats  extensively  in  those  years,  and  no 


36  SHAKvSPKR   NOT   SHAKKSPKARE. 

doubt  did  reap  some  knowledge  of  the  Stratford  world 
and  Stratford  human  nature. 

Mr.  Phillipps  proceeds  (61):  "It  was  the  usual 
custom  at  Stratford  for  apprentices  to  be  bound  either 
for  seven  or  ten  years,  so  that  if  Shakespeare  (Shak- 
sper)  were  one  of  them,  it  is  not  likely  that  he  was  out 
of  his  articles  at  the  time  of  his  marriage,  which  took 
place  in  1582. 

little  schooling,  perhaps  none;  illiterate  family,  bo- 
vine neighbors;  bookless  town;  the  five  best  years  of 
his  life  devoted  to  getting  a  knowledge  of  the  world 
and  of  human  nature  as  a  butcher, — a  more  perfect 
knowledge,  Phillipps  thinks,  than  could  have  been  de- 
rived from  a  study  of  the  classics, — no  wonder  this 
youth  speedily  came  to  grief. 

His  marriage  took  place  28th  November,  1582,  when 
he  was  18  years  old:  married  to  Ann  Whately,  age  27. 
The  day  before,  or  on  2yth  November,  in  the  Con- 
sistory Court,  at  Worcester,  in  the  Marriage  Register, 
there  is  an  entry  in  these  terms:  "1582,  Nov.  2yth, 
William  Shaxper  and  Ann  Whateley,  of  Temple 
Grafton;  and  on  the  28th,  a  bond  is  given  to  the 
Bishop  of  Worcester  to  hold  him  harmless  for  licens- 
ing, etc. ,  the  marriage  of  William  Shagspere  and  Ann 
Hathaway."  Donnelly,  829.  Mr.  Donnelly  gives  a 
plausible  explanation  of  the  mystery:  "Ann  had 
been  married  to  one  Whately,  and  when  the  bride  her- 
self gave  her  name  for  the  marriage  license,  27th  No- 
vember, she  gave  it  correctly,  and  she  was  married  by 
that  name;  but  the  next  day,  when  her  farmer  friends 
were  called  upon  to  furnish  the  bond,  they  gave  the 
lawyer  who  drew  it  the  name  by  which,  in  the  careless 


THE   YOUTH   OF   WIUJAM   SHAKSPER.  37 

fashion  of  such  people,  she  was  generally  known". 
Their  first  child  was  born  within  six  months  after,  and 
twin  children  wTere  baptized  1585,  2d  July.  "Some 
biographers  have  taken  the  ground  that  the  smart 
young  woman  of  twenty-six  entrapped  the  boy  of 
eighteen  into  this  match,  .  .  .  but  I  fancy  that 
the  boy  himself  would  have  disdained  to  urge  any  such 
excuse  for  his  conduct.  William  Shaksper  at  eighteen 
was  not  the  guileless  and  unsophisticated  country 
youth  that  the  theory  assumes;  and  I  suspect  that  he 
was  more  to  blame  for  the  hurried  match  than  was 
Ann  Hathaway."  Dr.  W.  J.  Rolfe,  Ladies'  Home 
Journal,  XII,  No.  4,  p.  2,  1895  (paper  on  Mrs.  Shak- 
spere).  The  fact  undoubtedly  was  that  this  lad  "of 
spirit' ' ,  having,  as  Phillipps  suggests,  been  engaged  in 
acquiring  a  knowledge  of  the  world'and  of  human  na- 
ture, when  he  should  have  been  at  his  books,  had 
developed  into  a  Stratford  Lothario, — a  homespun  Don 
Juan. 

"The  general  tradition  among  the  rustics  of  the 
neighborhood  was  that  the  poet  was  wild  in  his 
younger  days".  H.-P.,  I,  71. 

"Three  or  four  years  after  his  union  with  Ann 
Hathaway  (Whately),  he  had,  observes  Rowe,  by  a 
misfortune  common  enough  to  young  fellows,  fallen 
into  ill  company;  and  amongst  them  some  that  made 
a  frequent  practice  of  deer-stealing  engaged  him  with 
them  more  than  once  in  robbing  a  park  that  belonged  to 
Sir  Thomas  Lucy,  of  Charlecote,  near  Stratford.  For 
this  he  was  prosecuted  by  this  gentleman,  etc. ;  .  .  . 
it  redoubled  the  prosecution  against  him  to  that  degree 
that  he  was  obliged  to  leave  his  business  and  family 


38  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKKSPKARE}. 

for  some  time,  and  shelter  himself  in  L,ondon' ' .  H. -P. , 
I,  67.  In  plain  English,  he  deserted  his  wife  and 
babies,  and  it  was  many  a  long  year  before  he  came 
back  to  them. 

'  'Another  version  of  the  narrative  has  been  recorded 
by  Archdeacon  Davies,  who  was  the  vicar  of  Sapperton, 
in  the  neighboring  county  of  Gloucester,  and  who 
died  there  in  the  year  1708" — or  ninety-two  years  after 
the  death  of  the  player.  "According  to  this  author- 
ity, the  future  great  dramatist  was  'much  given  to  all 
unluckiness  in  stealing  venison  and  rabbits,  particularly 
from  Sir  William  L,ucy,  who  had  him  oft  whipped,  and 
sometimes  imprisoned,  and  at  last  made  him  fly  his 
native  country  to  his  great  advancement' ....  It 
is  evident  therefore  from  the  independent  testimonies 
of  Rowe  and  Davies  that  the  deer-stealing  history 
was  accepted  in  the  poet's  native  town,  and  in  the 
neighborhood  during  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  That  it  has  a  solid  basis  of  fact  cannot  admit 
of  a  reasonable  doubt.  ,  .  .  The  impressive  story 
of  the  penniless  fugitive  who  afterwards  became  a 
leading  inhabitant  of  Stratford,  and  the  owner  of  New 
Place,  was  one  likely  to  be  handed  down  with  passable 
fidelity  to  the  grandchildren  of  his  contemporaries". 
H.-P.  I,  69. 

"That  he  was  also  nearly,  if  not  quite  moneyless,  is 
to  be  inferred  from  tradition,  the  latter  supported  by 
the  ascertained  facts  of  the  adverse  circumstances  of 
his  father  at  the  time  rendering  it  impossible  for  him 
to  have  received  effectual  assistance  from  his  parents; 
nor  is  there  any  reason  for  believing  that  he  was  likely 


THE   YOUTH   OF   WIIJJAM   SHAKSPER.  39 

to  have  obtained  substantial  aid  from  the  relatives  of 
his  wife".  Id.  I,  79. 

''His  father  was  bankrupt;  his  own  family  rapidly 
increasing;  his  home  was  dirty,  bookless  and  miser- 
able; his  companions  degraded;  his  pursuits  low;  he 
had  been  whipped  and  imprisoned,  and  he  fled  penni- 
less to  the  great  city."  Donnelly,  40. 

A  bright  young  fellow,  of  scanty  education  and  in- 
different morals.  He  has  seen  all  he  cares  to  of  pov- 
erty and  its  attendant  miseries,  and  if  he  can  find  any- 
thing to  turn  his  hand  to,  he  will  strive  for  money. 
That  is  the  goal  he  has  set  his  heart  on,  and  it  will  be 
found  he  reaches  it — money,  heaps  of  it. 

"It  was  natural  that  the  poet  (Shaksper),  having 
not  only  himself  bitterly  felt  the  want  of  resources  not 
so  many  years  previously,  but  seen  so  much  incon- 
venience arising  from  a  similar  deficiency  in  his  fa- 
ther's household,  should  now  be  determined  to  avoid 
the  chance  of  a  recurrence  of  the  infliction."  H.-P. 

I,  163. 

Wendell  says,  423:  "The  son  of  a  ruined  country 
tradesman,  and  saddled  with  a  wife  and  three  children, 
his  business  at  twenty-three  was  to  conduct  his  life 
so  that  he  might  end  it,  not  as  a  laborer,  but  as  a  gen- 
tleman. After  five  and  twenty  years  of  steady  work, 
this  end  had  been  accomplished."  Accomplished,  as 
to  the  money  getting,  but  as  to  the  "gentleman", 
that  is  another  matter. 


40  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

CHAPTER  V. 

WHITHER? 

In  view  of  the  history  of  the  boy  and  young  man 
to  his  twenty-second  year,  as  gathered  from  the  most 
painstaking  and  trustworthy  Shaksperean  authorities, 
let  us  see  if  we  can  make  out  the  sort  of  individual  he 
necessarily  must  have  been. 

We  have  seen  that  the  hereditary  set  of  the  brain 
in  the  Shaksper  family  was  in  any  direction  but  that 
of  mental  cultivation;  that  they  were  a  line  of  illite- 
rate peasants,  or  at  best  inferior  yeomen,  the  last  mem- 
ber of  it  a  humble  tradesman;  en  masse,  unable  to 
read  and  write,  and  therefore  without  book  knowl- 
edge. 

We  are  told  by  Phillipps  that  the  population  of 
Stratford  "was  a  conversational  and  stagnant"  one; 
that  "the  large  majority  of  the  inhabitants  had  never 
in  their  lives  traveled  beyond  twenty  or  thirty  miles 
from  their  homes";  that  "outside  bibles,  and  the  few 
elementary  L,atin  books,  there  were  not  more  than  two 
or  three  dozen  books  in  the  town' ' .  We  know  that  the 
only  language  spoken  and  heard  was  the  limited  patois 
of  Warwickshire,  as  unintelligible  to  a  Londoner  as 
that  of  Yorkshire  or  Dorsetshire;  we  have  seen  the 
squalid  environment  in  which  the  boy  was  born  and 
reared;  the  narrow  limits  of  his  schooling,  if  there 
was  any  schooling  at  all;  we  have  seen  the  butcher's 
apprentice  and  learned  of  his  disorderly  habits;  of  his 


WHITHER  ?  41 

early  and  discreditable  marriage,  which  insured  his 
poverty,  and  bound  him  to  evil  companions,  and  to 
untoward  conditions  of  every  sort;  and,  finally,  of 
his  flight  before  the  constable  to  London.  In  the 
next  chapter  we  shall  discover  that  on  reaching  Con- 
don, he  was  at  once  attracted  towards  the  public  the- 
ater, the  vilest  place  of  amusement,  and  soon  after 
associated  himself  with  the  players,  who,  in  that  age, 
were  regarded  as  disreputable,  and  by  the  law  were 
held  to  be  no  better  than  rogues  and  vagabonds,  and  who 
spent  the  greater  part  of  every  year  in  strolling  through 
England.  What  must  be  the  future,  intellectually 
and  morally,  of  a  boy  and  youth  so  reared  and  at  last 
sunk  into  that  sort  of  companionship? 

Dr.  Holmes  tells  us  that  a  child's  training  begins  a 
hundred  years  before  he  is  born;  Herbert  Spencer, 
that  the  great  man  "is  a  resultant  of  an  enormous  ag- 
gregate of  forces  that  have  been  co-operating  for 
ages' ' ;  that  we  need  not  expect  the  child  to  be  radi- 
cally different  from  the  parents,  a  mathematician  from 
one  who  has  no  sense  of  numbers,  or  a  poet  from  one 
who  has  no  ideality  in  his  composition. 

Galton  begins  his  volume  on  heredity  with  the 
words:  "I  propose  to  show  that  a  man's  natural  abili- 
ties are  derived  by  inheritance."  He  tells  us  that 
"ability  in  the  long  run  does  not  start  into  existence 
and  disappear  with  equal  abruptness,  but  rather  it 
rises  on  a  gradual  and  regular  curve  out  of  the  ordi- 
nary level  of  family  life". 

"Whatever  may  be  the  natural  capacity  the  future 
of  the  child  in  youth  will  be  determined  by  the  influ- 
ences which  surround  him  from  the  cradle  onward. ' ' 


42  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

Or,  as  Carlyle  puts  it,  "early  culture  and  nurture  de- 
cide whether  there  shall  be  a  doddered,  dwarf  bush, 
or  a  high  towering,  wide-spreading  tree. ' '  And  again, 
"The  history  of  a  man's  childhood  is  the  description 
of  his  parents  and  environment". 

Dr.  Weisman  declares  of  musical  genius,  that '  'with- 
out early  stimulus,  and  a  constant  opportunity  of  hear- 
ing and  being  instructed  in  the  highest  music,  even 
the  greatest  genius  must  remain  undeveloped' ' .  This 
is  as  true  of  literature  as  of  music;  no  matter  what 
the  natural  capacity  may  be,  if  there  is  no  early  stim- 
ulus, no  reading  of  books,  no  training,  no  contact  with 
intellectual  and  cultivated  people,  the  mind  will  and 
must  necessarily  remain  undeveloped. 

Does  it  look  as  if  the  capitalized  experience  of  the 
tribe  of  Shaksper  was  of  a  character  and  volume  to 
make  this  underling  at  the  public  theater  become  the 
flower  of  the  English  race,  a  prodigy  of  learning  ac- 
quired from  books,  as  well  as  knowledge  from  obser- 
vation and  wisdom  by  introspection;  the  "best  head  in 
the  Universe",  according  to  Emerson;  "the  fullest 
head  of  which  there  is  any  record",  according  to 
I,o well;  the  greatest  of  England's  poets.  The  thing 
is  absolutely  impossible.  No  child  in  the  world's  his- 
tory, with  such  antecedents  and  with  such  conditions, 
the  formative  period  of  his  life  lost,  intellectual  facts 
and  habits  not  acquired  before  manhood,  ever  did 
blossom  forth  as  a  great  poet  or  prose  writer,  or  liter- 
ary man  of  any  mark  whatever.  Youth  is  the  only 
period  in  which  intellectual  habits  can  be  formed;  and 
that  wasted,  there  is  no  remedy.  Shakespeare  tells 
us: 


WHITHER  ?  43 

"This  .Horning,  like  the  spirit  of  a  youth 
That  means  to  be  of  note,  begins  betimes". 

Whoever  heard  of  William  Shaksper,  in  his  irre- 
pressible ardor  for  learning,  as  out  of  bed  at  night 
studying  by  candle  light,  or  by  the  kitchen  fire,  like 
Abraham  Lincoln;  or  up  in  the  early  morning,  -poring 
over  his  books  ?  There  were  no  books,  the  town  was 
bookless.  A  bookless  neighborhood !  The  future  of 
the  boy  may  be  predicted  from  those  two  words.  He 
may  become  a  successful  business  man,  a  rich  man,  for 
he  shares  the  faculty  of  accumulation  with  rats  and 
rodents,  magpies  and  crows,  and  besides  he  has  inher- 
ited what  business  capacity  his  father  and  grandfather 
were  possessed  of,  but  a  literary  man  of  mark,  never! 
"No  matter  how  poor  I  am  ...  if  the  writers 
will  enter  and  take  up  their  abode  under  my  roof 
.  .  .  I  shall  not  want  for  intellectual  companion- 
ship, and  I  may  become  a  cultivated  man."  But  to 
the  unlettered  boy  in  a  bookless  neighborhood,  there 
is  no  such  future.  The  converse  of  Dr.  Channing's 
proposition  is  true:  If  the  writers  do  not  enter,  etc.,  I 
may  not  become  a  cultivated  man.  Burns  had  humble 
beginnings,  and  his  case  has  been  said  to  run  on  all 
fours  with  William  Shaksper 's.  But  that  is  a  mis- 
take. Burns  "was  taught  English  well,  and  by  the 
time  he  was  ten  or  twelve  years  of  age,  he  was  a  critic 
in  substantives,  verbs,  and  particles.  He  had  a  few 
books,  among  which  were  the  Spectator,  Pope's  Works, 
Allan  Ramsay,  and  a  collection  of  English  songs. 
.  .  .  At  about  twenty-three,  his  reading  enlarged. 
.  ,  .  What  books  he  had,  he  read  and  studied 


44  SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

thoroughly."  So  Chambers  tells  us.  Burns  warbled 
his  native  wood  notes  wild  in  the  simple  language  of 
his  district,  but  not  in  Latin  and  Greek,  in  French 
and  Italian;  nor  did  he  warble  of  all  the  sciences,  and 
of  all  the  philosophies,  as  the  author  of  the  Shake- 
speare plays  did. 

I  read  in  the  "Outlook"  for  25th  July,  1896,  called 
forth  by  the  recent  Burns  Centennial:  "Another  erro- 
neous impression  about  Burns,  which  has  been  set 
right  by  time,  is  the  once  widely  held  belief  that  he 
was  utterly  without  education.  The  'inspired  plough- 
man', untutored  and  untrained,  was  supposed  to  have 
sung  as  the  bird  sings  or  the  flower  grows.  Those 
who  know  anything  about  the  conditions  under  which 
strong  men  come  to  the  mastery  of  their  strength,  and 
men  of  genius  to  the  possession  of  their  power,  know 
that  nothing  is  achieved  without  preparation;  that  the 
very  artlessness  and  simplicity  through  which  the 
heart  speaks  in  entire  unconsciousness  is  won  at  the 
end  of  training,  not  at  the  beginning.  Every  great 
artist  became  great  by  the  development  of  the  quality 
which  is  in  him;  he  does  not  become  great  by  acci- 
dent." 

This  applies  to  Shakespeare,  the  writer  of  the 
plays,  as  well  as  to  Burns ;  neither  of  them  became 
great  by  accident,  and  neither  did  anything  great  that 
was  not  achieved  by  preparation.  Untutored  and  un- 
trained genuises  accomplish  nothing. 

John  Bunyan  was  the  son  of  a  tinker,  but  he 
was  taught  in  childhood  to  read  and  write,  and  al- 
though he  at  one  time  led  a  vagrant  life,  yet  we  find 
him  at  the  age  of  27  spoken  of  as  a  zealous  preacher, 


WHITHKR  ?  45 


and  for  five  years  he  pursued  this  calling  before  he 
was  thrown  into  Bedford  jail.  There  he  wrote  his  im- 
mortal work,  not  in  Greek  and  Latin,  under  immediate 
inspiration,  but  "in  current  English,  the  vernacular 
of  his  age," — the  only  language  William  Shaksper 
could  have  written  in,  had  he  written  at  all.  Also 
John  Bunyan  was  thoroughly  educated  in  the  Bible,  as 
any  one  could  see  ;  and  such  an  education  is  second 
only  to  that  in  Homer. 

Morse,  in  his  Life  of  Lincoln,  II,  356,  brackets 
Lincoln  and  Shakespeare  (of  course  he  means  the 
author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  whoever  he  was) 
together,  in  that  both  seem  to  "run  through  the  whole 
gamut  of  human  nature".  Lincoln  was  descended 
from  Massachusetts  Puritans,  though  for  two  genera- 
tions his  family,  as  pioneers  in  the  wilderness,  were 
subject  to  enforced  illiteracy.  "He  did  not  come  of  a 
trifling,  silly  or  stupid  family",  Mr.  Charles  A.  Dana 
said,  in  his  lecture  on  Lincoln,  at  New  Haven.  The 
boy  Abraham  had  a  burning  thirst  for  knowledge. 
He  taught  himself  to  read  all  the  books  he  could  get — 
the  Bible,  Bunyan,  and  ^Esop's  Fables.  "Lincoln 
learned  to  read  from  the  spelling  book  and  the  Bible  ; 
then  he  borrowed  Pilgrim's  Progress,  and  ^Ssop's 
Fables  ;  and  would  sit  up  half  the  night  reading  them 
by  the  blaze  of  the  logs  his  own  axe  had  split. ' ' 
Montgomery's  History  U.  S.,  279.  Later  he  got 
possession  of  an  English  Grammar,  and  still  later  of 
law  books.  He  was  always  striving  to  improve  him- 
self, and  his  natural  ability  as  a  thinker  with  practice 
made  him  a  clear-headed  lawyer.  Mr.  Dana  says : 
"He  rose  by  hard  work  and  by  genius  to  become  one 


46  SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

of  the  leading  lawyers  of  the  Illinois  bar."  It  is 
always  "hard  work"  that  accomplishes  anything, 
genius  or  no  genius.  But  Lincoln  did  not  talk  and 
think  in  L,atin,  as  the  unlettered,  idle  boy,  William 
Shaksper,  is  imagined  by  some  of  his  unreflecting 
admirers  to  have  been  inspired  to  do. 

Mrs.  Dall  (26)  says:  "A  great  deal  has  been  said 
about  Shakespeare's  deficient  education  ;  but  he  had 
more  education  than  many  eminent  men  in  America. 
One  of  the  most  widely  read  men  I  ever  knew  in  many 
languages  had  only  one  six  weeks  schooling  in  his  life- 
time. .  .  .  The  stories  of  the  learned  blacksmith 
(EHhu  Burritt)  and  of  Robert  Collier  are  familiar  to 
this  generation."  But  Burritt  was  far  from  being  the 
child  of  unlettered  parents  and  grandparents,  in  an 
ignorant  and  bookless  neighborhood.  He  himself 
said,  in  an  autobiographical  letter  in  the  Worcester 
Spy,  of  December  i,  1841  :  "My  means  of  education 
were  limited  to  the  advantages  of  a  district  school," 
which  ended  when  he  was  fifteen  years  of  age,  on  the 
death  of  his  father.  He  then  had  to  go  to  work,  and 
apprenticed  himself  to  a  blacksmith  in  his  native 
village  (New  Britain,  Conn.).  "Thither  I  carried  an 
indomitable  taste  for  reading,  which  I  had  previously  ac- 
quired through  the  medium  of  the  social  library. 
I  suddenly  conceived  the  idea  of  studying  Latin. 
Through  the  assistance  of  an  elder  brother,  who  had 
himself  obtained  a  collegiate  education,  I  completed 
my  Virgil  during  the  evenings  of  one  winter",  etc., 
etc.  I  fail  to  see  anywhere  resemblance  between  the 
environment  of  Burritt  and  that  of  Shaksper.  Bur- 
ritt's  great  lecture, delivered  sixty  times  in  the  cities 


WHITHER?  47 

and  towns  of  the  northern  U.  S. ,  during  the  winter  of 
1841,  was  on  "Application  and  Genius",  and  his 
argument  was  that  genius  consists  in  the  capacity  for 
hard  work,  and  that  nothing  great  is  done  without 
labor.  The  only  man  known  to  history  who  became 
great  without  study,  or  preparation,  is  this  William 
Shaksper,  as  his  admirers  love  to  picture  him.  The 
suggestion  of  Burritt  is  as  infelicitous  as  was  that  of 
Burns,  or  of  Bunyan,  or  of  Lincoln. 

It  will  be  well  to  notice  here  the  testimony  of  John 
Milton  respecting  his  own  education,  and  surround- 
ings, and  habits,  and  dispositions,  as  he  came  close 
after  Shaksper.  Could  we  read  such  testimony  of  the 
player  there  would  be  no  need  of  the  immediate  inspi- 
ration theory  to  account  for  his  omniscience:  ''For 
after  I  had  from  my  first  years,  by  the  ceaseless  dili- 
gence and  care  of  my  father,  been  exercised  to  the 
tongues  and  some  sciences,  as  my  age  could  suffer,  by 
sundry  masters  and  teachers,  it  was  found  that 
whether  aught  was  imposed  upon  me  by  them  or  be- 
taken to  be  of  my  own  choice,  the  style,  by  certain 
vital  signs  it  had,  was  likely  to  live;  but  much  latelier, 
in  the  private  academies  of  Italy,  perceiving  that  some 
trifles  which  I  had  in  memory,  composed  at  under 
twenty  or  thereabouts,  met  with  acceptance  above 
what  was  looked  for;  I  began  thus  far  to  assent  to 
them  and  divers  of  my  friends  here  at  home,  and  not 
less  to  an  inward  prompting  which  now  grew  daily 
upon  me,  that  by  labor  and  incessant  study,  joined  with 
the  strong  propensity  of  nature,  I  might  perhaps  leave 
something  so  written  to  aftertimes,  as  they  should  not 
willingly  let  it  die."  Whoever  was  the  author  of  the 


48  SHAKSPER   NOT*   SHAKKSPEARE. 

Shakespeare  plays,  he  was  undoubtedly  trained  after 
the  manner  in  which  Milton  was  trained,  even  to  the 
schooling  in  Italy.* 

Early  training  at  home,  masters  and  teachers,  study 
in  Italy,  and  "labor  and  incessant  study"  always! 
Whenever  the  real  author  of  these  plays  is  found, 
that  will  have  been  his  history. 

*  Italy  in  Elizabeth's  age  was  the  center  of  art  and  learning, 
and  students  from  all  western  Europe  flocked  to  her  schools. 


WILLIAM   SHAKSPER   ON   ENTERING   LONDON.      49 


CHAPTER   VI. 

THE  LIFE  OF  WILLIAM   SHAKSPER    ON    ENTERING 
LONDON. 

"It  is  important  to  observe  that  all  the  early  tradi- 
tions to  which  any  value  can  be  attached  concur  in  the 
belief  that  Shakespeare"  (Shaksper)  "did  not  leave 
his  native  town  with  histrionic  intentions.  .  .  . 
It  is  extremely  unlikely  that,  at  the  age  of  twenty-one, 
he  would,  voluntarily,  have  left  a  wife  and  three 
children  in  Warwickshire,  for  the  sake  of  obtaining  a 
miserable  position  on  the  London  boards."  H.-P., 
I,  82. 

R.  G.  White  says,  (Shakespeare  Studies):  "When 
at  twenty-two  years  of  age  he  fled  from  Stratford  to 
I/)ndon,  we  may  be  sure  that  he  had  never  seen 
half  a  dozen  books  other  than  his  horn  book,  his 
L/atin  Accidence,  and  a  Bible;  probably  there  were  not 
half  a  dozen  others  in  all  Stratford." 

As  is  seen,  Mr.  Phillipps  makes  Shaksper  leave 
home  at  21  years  of  age,  or  in  1585;  Mr.  White  at 
22  years,  in  1586.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Fleay 
brings  him  to  London  at  23  years,  in  1587:  "Dr. 
Johnson  (in  1765)  no  doubt  accurately  reported  the 
tradition  of  his  day,  when  he  stated  that  Shakspere 
came  to  London  a  needy  adventurer,  and  lived  for  a 
time  by  very  mean  employments.  To  the  same  effect 
is  the  testimony  given  by  the  author  of  Ratsie's 
Ghost,  1605,  where  the  strolling  player,  in  a  passage 


50  SHAKSPKR    NOT 

reasonably  believed  to  refer  to  the  great  dramatist,  ob- 
serves in  reference  to  actors:  'I  have  heard,  indeed,  of 
some  that  have  gone  to  L,ondon  very  meanly,  and  have 
come  in  time  to  be  exceedingly  wealthy' .  The  author 
of  the  last  named  tract  was  evidently  well  acquainted 
with  the  theatrical  gossip  of  his  day,  so  that  his  nearly 
contemporary  evidence  011  the  subject  may  be  fairly 
accepted  as  a  truthful  record  of  the  current  belief." 
H.-P.,  I,  79- 

Dr.  Johnson  says:  "When  Shakspere  fled  to  I/m- 
don  from  the  terror  of  a  criminal  prosecution,  his  first 
expedient  was  to  wait  at  the  door  of  the  play-house, 
and  hold  the  horses  of  those  who  had  no  servants, 
that  they  might  be  ready  again  after  the  performance; 
in  this  office  he  became  so  conspicuous  for  his  care  and 
readiness,  that  in  a  short  time  every  man,  as  he 
alighted,  called  for  Will  Shakspere,  and  scarcely  any 
other  waiter  was  trusted  with  a  horse  while  Will 
Shakspere  was  to  be  had.  This  was  the  first  dawn  of 
better  fortune.  Shakspere,  finding  more  horses  put 
into  his  hands  than  he  could  hold,  hired  boys  to  wait 
under  his  inspection,  who,  when  Will  Shakspere  was 
summoned,  were  to  immediately  present  themselves, 
'I  am  Shakspere's  boy,  sir' ;  in  time  Shakspere  found 
higher  employment' ' .  Dr.  Johnson  received  this  anec- 
dote from  Pope,  to  whom  it  had  been  communicated 
by  Rowe;  and  it  appears  to  have  reached  Rowe  through 
Betterton  and  Davenant"  (actors  in  the  last  half  of  the 
seventeenth  century).  H.-P.,  I,  80. 

"Nothing  has  been  discovered  respecting  the  history 
of  Shakspere's  early  theatrical  life."  H.-P.,  I,  89. 
'  'The  actors  were  as  a  rule  individual  wan- 


WII4JAM   SHAKSPER   ENTERING   LONDON.          51 

derers,  spending  a  large  portion  of  their  time  at  a  dis- 
tance from  their  families;  and  there  is  every  reason  for 
believing  that  this  was  the  case  with  Shakespeare  from 
the  period  of  his  arrival  in  London  till  nearly  the  end 
of  his  life.  All  the  old  theatrical  companies  were 
more  or  less  of  an  itinerant  character,  and  it  is  all  but 
impossible  that  he  should  not  have  already  (by  1587) 
commenced  his  provincial  tours."  H.-P.,  I,  95.  Pro- 
vincial tours — wandering  from  town  to  hamlet,  from 
hamlet  to  town,  leading  a  "blind  jade  and  a  hamper", 
or  carrying  his  fardel  on  his  back,  towards  every 
country  fair  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land;  giving 
shabby  performances  in  inn-yards  when  in  towns,  or 
in  out-houses  or  the  open  air,  in  the  country,  mounted 
"on  boards  and  barrel-heads";  sleeping  where  night 
catches  him,  in  the  next  hay-rick,  or  in  the  sky-parlor. 
We  see  the  style  in  Dickens  and  Thackeray,  two  hun- 
dred and  more  years  later,  and  similar  vagabonds  may 
be  seen  to-day  at  every  fair  in  England.  Nothing 
changes  in  rural  England,  and  one  age  there  is  the 
same  as  another.  Any  chance  for  acquiring  the  lan- 
guage and  manners  of  courts  in  that  sort  of  compan- 
ionship, in  that  sort  of  dog-life?  Any  chance  for  the 
developing  one's  vocabulary?  Any  chance  for  ground- 
ing oneself  in  the  classics,  or  in  French  and  Italian? 
Or  of  becoming  expert  in  the  law,  or  science,  or 
philosophy?  Any  chance  for  anything  but  bread  and 
meat,  and  coppers,  and  moral  worsening?  I  should 
say,  not  much! 

"It  made  little  difference  to  Shakspere  practically 
whether  his  familv  were  in  London  or  Stratford,  so 
long  as  he  led  the  life  of  a  player.  That  was  a  wan- 


52  SHAKSP3R   NOT   SHAKKSP£AR£. 

dering  life,  spent  in  travelling  from  province  to 
province".  Dall,  45. 

"In  1587,  in  the  spring,  Shakspere  gave  his  assent 
to  a  proposed  settlement  of  a  mortgage  on  his  mother's 
Asbies  estate.  For  ten  years  after  there  is  no  vestige 
of  any  communication  with  his  family".  Fleay,  8. 
The  appearance  of  Shaksper  in  Stratford  in  1587  is 
corroborated  by  H.-P. 

"On  5th  August,  1596,  his  son  Hamnetdied,  and  he 
unquestionably  visited  Stratford  and  renewed  relations 
with  his  family  at  this  time.  .  .  .  The  natural 
interpretation  of  such  records  as  have  reached  us  is 
that  it  was  not  till  touched  by  the  hand  of  the  great 
reconciler,  death  .  .  .  that  he  ever  visited  his 
family  at  all  during  the  nine  years  since  he  left  them 
to  carve  his  own  way  as  a  strolling  player' ' .  Fleay,  28. 

Lee  says,  187:  "It  was  probably  in  1596  that 
Shakespeare  returned,  after  nearly  eleven  years  ab- 
sence, to  his  native  town."  In  the  preceding  para- 
graph, we  read:  "There  is  a  likelihood  that  the  poet's 
wife  fared,  in  the  poet's  absence,  no  better  than  his 
father",  (who  had  gone  to  the  bow-wows).  "The 
only  contemporary  mention  made  of  her  between  her 
marriage  in  1582  and  her  husband's  death  (1616)  is 
as  the  borrower  at  an  unascertained  date  (evidently 
before  1595)  of  forty  .shillings  from  Thomas  Whit- 
tington,  who  had  formerly  been  her  father's  shepherd. 
The  money  was  unpaid  when  Whittington  died,  in 
1 60 1,  and  he  directed  his  executor  to  recover  the  sum 
from  the- poet",  (i.  e.,  player  Shaksper)  "and  dis- 
tribute it  among  the  poor  of  Stratford." 

"There  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence  respecting  his 


WILLIAM   SHAKSPER   ON  ENTERING   LONDON.       53 

career  during  the  next  five  years"  (that  is  to  say,  from 
1587),  "until  he  is  discovered  as  a  rising  actor  and 
dramatist,  in  1592.  This  interval  must  have  been  the 
chief  period  of  Shakespeare's  literary  education.  Re- 
moved prematurely  from  school,  residing  with  illiterate 
relations  in  a  bookless  neighborhood,  thrown  in  the 
midst  of  occupations  adverse  to  scholastic  progress,  it 
is  difficult  to  believe  that,  when  he  first  left  Stratford,  he 
was  not  all  but  destitute  of  polished  accomplishments". 
H.-P.,  I,  95- 

"Although  Shakespeare  had  exhibited  a  taste  for 
poetic  composition"  *  (he  had  written  the  well-known 
lampoon  of  the  L/ucys,  and  the  doggerel  of  John-a- 
Combe,  as  Mr.  Phillipps  has  previously  told)  "before 
his  first  departure  from  Stratford,  all  traditions  agree 
in  the  statement  that  he  was  a  recognized  actor  before 
he  joined  the  ranks  of  the  dramatists.  This  latter 
event  appears  to  have  occurred  on  March  3rd,  1592, 
when  a  new  drama,  entitled  Henry  VI,  was  brought 
out",  etc.  Id.,  I,  97. 

I  remark  here  that  when  Mr.  Phillipps  says  that 
Shaksper  ' '  is  discovered  as  a  rising  actor  and  drama- 
tist' ' ,  or  that  he  was  a  recognized  actor  before  he  joined 

*  Dr.  Drake  says,  Pt.  II,  ch.  n:  "Of  his  inclination  to  this 
elegant  branch  of  literature  (poetry)  we  have  an  early  proof, 
in  the  mode  of  retaliation  which  he  adopted,  in  consequence  of 
his  prosecution  by  Sir  Thomas  Lucy."  This  well-known  ef- 
fusion begins. 

"A  parliamente  member,  a  justice  of  peace, 
At  home  a  poor  scare  crow,  at  London  an  asse, 
If  Lowsie  is  Lucy,  as  some  volk  miscalle  it, 
Then  Lucy  is  lowsie  whatever  befall  it,"  etc. 


54         SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

the  ranks  of  the  dramatists"  (in  1592),  we  are  to  un- 
derstand simply  that,  by  1592,  the  plays  now  attributed 
to  "Shakespeare"  had  begun  to  appear,  that  is  all. 
By  assuming  that  William  Shaksper  wrote  these  plays, 
he  naturally  makes  him  out  a  dramatist,  but  in  his 
two  volumes  there  is  no  reason  given  why  he  should 
do  this, — not  one  word  that  connects  William  Shak- 
sper with  the  authorship  of  the  plays.  Unless  Mr. 
Phillipps  can  justify  his  action  by  authority,  he  is 
robbing  Peter  to  pay  Paul.  Peter  naturally  objects. 

As  to  Shaksper  being  then  a  recognized  actor,  the 
only  proof  of  it  adduced  by  Mr.  Phillipps  is  to  be 
found  in  Greene's  complaint  against  "an  upstart-crow, 
beautified  with  our  feathers,  that  with  histyger's  heart 
wrapped  in  a  Player's  Hide  supposes  that  he  is  as  well 
able  to  bombast  out  a  blank  verse  as  the  best  of  you; 
and  being  an  absolute  Johannes-fac-totum  is  in  his 
own  conceit  the  only  Shake- scene  in  a  country' ' .  Phil- 
lipps says,  97:  "In  this  year  (1592),  as  we  learn 
on  unquestionable  authority"  (Greene's,  as  above), 
"Shakespeare  (Shaksper)  was  first  rising  into  notice, 
so  that  the  history  then  produced,  now  known  as  the 
i  Henry  VI,  was,  in  all  probability,  his  earliest,  com- 
plete dramatic  work.  .  .  .  Robert  Greene  had 
travestied  a  line  from  one  of  Shakspeare's  then  recent 
compositions,  'O  tiger's  heart,  wrapp'd  in  a  woman's 
hide'.  This  line  is  of  extreme  importance  as  includ- 
ing the  earliest  record  of  words  composed  by  the  great 
dramatist.  It  forms  part  of  a  vigorous  speech  which 
is  as  Shakesperean  in  its  natural  characterial  fidelity 
as  it  is  Marlowean  in  its  diction' ' .  This  line  was  from 
the  play  3  Henry  VI,  and  Phillipps'  argument,  and  his 


WILLIAM   SHAKSPER   ON  ENTERING   LONDON.       55 

only  argument,  is  that,  because  Shakespeare  wrote 
that  play,  the  "Shake-scene"  of  Greene  must  have 
been  intended  for  that  "bard  of  our  admiration' '.  We 
will  see  about  this  a  little  further  on.  There  is  good 
reason  for  the  line  quoted  being  Marlowean  in  its 
diction ! 

Turning  to  Ingleby,  3,  he  says:  "That  Shake- 
speare (Shaksper)  was  the  upstart-crow,  and  one  of 
the  purloiners  of  Greene's  plumes,  is  put  beyond  a 
doubt  by  the  following  considerations:  i.  That  there 
was  no  such  word  as  Shake-scene  (z  e.,  a  tragedian).* 
How  is  that  for  a  reason?  2.  That  the  line  in 
italics  is  a  parody  on  one  which  is  found  in  "The 
True  Tragedy  of  Richard  Duke  of  York,  1595,  and 
also  in  Shakespeare's  Henry  VI,  Part  III,  Act.  I,  sec. 
4.  3.  That  Marlowe  and  Robert  Greene  were  (prob- 
ably) the  joint  authors  of  the  two  parts  of  the  Con- 
tention, and  of  the  True  History,  etc.,  which  furnished 
Parts  II  and  III  of  Henry  VI  with  their  prima  stamina, 
and  a  considerable  number  of  lines."  These  are  the 
reasons  given  by  two  distinguished  Shakespeare  com- 
mentators for  holding  the  Shake-scene  of  Greene  to 
be  William  Shaksper,  an  obscure,  and  up  to  1592,  un- 
mentioned  and  unnoticed  player.  The  principal  rea- 
son of  Ingleby,  which  is  identical  with  the  only  one  of 
Phillipps,  is  that  this  line  quoted  was  from  a  Shake- 

*  Ingleby  makes  "tragedian"  here  synonymous  with  "Shake- 
scene";  and  instances  Jonson's  lines — "To  hear  thy  Buskin 
tread,  and  shake  a  stage";  and  also  a  passage  in  The  Puritaine, 
where  Pye-boord  says:  "Have  you  never  seen  a  stalking- 
stamping  Player,  that  will  raise  a  tempest  with  his  toung, 
and  thunder  with  his  heels".? 


56  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

speare  play,  meaning  a  play  written  by  William  Shak- 
sper.  But  as  distinguished  commentators  as  Ingleby 
or  Phillipps  attribute  the  play  in  question  to  Marlowe, 
or  to  him  in  collaboration  with  other  playwrights. 

"It  is  nearly  as  certain  as  anything  can  be  which 
depends  upon  cumulative  and  collateral  evidence,  that 
the  better  part  of  what  is  best  in  the  serious  scenes  of 
King  Henry  VI  is  mainly  the  work  of  Marlowe.  That 
he  is  at  any  rate  the  principal  author  of  the  second 
and  third  play  passing  under  that  name  among  the 
works  of  Shakespeare,  can  hardly  be  now  a  matter  of 
debate  among  competent  judges".  Bnc.  Brit.,  Mar- 
lowe (Swinburne). 

Fleay,  118,  says:  "Margaret  is  not  Shakespeare's 
creation;  she  is  Marlowe's.  Shakespeare  had  no  hand 
in  the  plays  on  the  Contention  of  York  and  Lancaster, 
(2  Henry  VI),  and  but  a  slight  one  in  i  Henry  VI. 
Marlowe  had  a  chief  hand  in  i  Henry  VI,  and  York 
and  Lancaster ;  probably  wrote  the  whole  of  Richard 
Duke  of  York,  3  Henry  VI."  Marlowe  was  killed  in 
a  brawl  i  June,  1592,  and  Fleay  says  that  his  plays 
"The  Taming  of  the  Shrew",  "Edward  III",  "Ham- 
let", and  "3  Henry  VI",  passed  from  Sussex's  men 
to  Lord  Strange' s  men,  (of  whom  William  Shaksper 
was  one). 

On  279:  '  'The  unhistorical  but  grandly  classical  con- 
ception of  Margaret,  the  Cassandra  prophetess,  the 
Helen- Ate  of  the  house  of  Lancaster,  which  binds  the 
whole  tetralogy  (The  three  Henry  VI  and  the  Richard 
III)  into  one  work,  is  undoubtedly  due  to  Marlowe, 
and  the  consummate  skill  with  which  he  has  fused  the 
heterogeneous  contributions  of  his  coadjutors  in  the  two 


SHAKSPER  ON  ENTERING  LONDON.   57 

earlier  Henry  VI  plays  is  no  less  worthy  of  admira- 
ion." 

Mr.  Lee,  59,  et  seq.,  while  crediting  Shakespeare 
with  the  best  that  is  in  the  three  Henry  VI  plays,  can- 
not but  admit  that  "criticism  has  proved  beyond  doubt 
that  in  these  plays  Shakespeare  did  no  more  than  add, 
revise,  and  correct  other  men's  work.  In  the  first, 
the  scene  in  the  Temple  Garden,  the  dying  speech  of 
Mortimer,  and  perhaps  the  wooing  of  Margaret  by 
Suffolk,  alone  bear  the  impress  of  his  style."  In  the 
other  two  "the  revising  hand  can  be  traced."  On  61 
he  tells  us  that  it  was  to  Marlowe  and  Lyly  that 
"Shakespeare's  indebtedness  as  a  writer  of  comedy  or 
tragedy  was  material.  .  .  .  His  early  tragedies 
often  reveal  him  in  the  character  of  a  faithful  disciple 
of  (Marlowe)  that  vehement  delineator  of  tragic  pas- 
sion. His  early  comedies  disclose  a  like  relationship 
between  him  and  Lyly."  Mr.  Lee  tells  us  that  Love's 
Labour's  Lost  is  in  the  style  of  Lyly.  "Richard  III 
and  Richard  II,  with  the  story  of  Shylock  later,  plainly 
disclose  a  conscious  resolve  to  follow  in  Marlowe's  foot- 
steps. .  .  .  Throughout  Richard  III  the  effort  to 
emulate  Marlowe  is  undeniable.  Richard  II  clearly 
suggests  Marlowe' s  Edward  II.  Shakespeare' s  tragedy 
closely  imitates  Marlowe." 

Marlowe's  contribution  to  the  "Shakespeare"  part- 
nership, following  Meres'  list  of  the  Shakespeare's  plays 
enumerated  in  1598,  was  as  four  to  twelve,  and  Rich- 
ard III  was  not  included  in  this  list.  It  is  seen  above 
that  "Edward  III"  was  one  of  Marlowe's  plays  as 
well  as  "The  Taming  of  the  Shrew".  So  also  prob- 
ably was  the  Venus  and  Adonis  and  the  Lucrece.  It 


58          SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

is  interesting  therefore  to  read  in  the  Boston  Tran- 
script of  Aug.  nth,  1897,  these  words:  "In  comment- 
ing upon  the  recent  performance  in  L,ondon  by  the 
Elizabethan  Stage  Society,  Mr.  William  Archer  writes 
in  the  London  World:  'While  Arden  of  Feversham 
was  being  recited,  a  still  small  voice  in  the  background 
of  one's  consciousness  kept  up  a  running  protest 
against  the  theory  that  this  was  the  work  of  Shake- 
speare. Then  came  the  scenes  from  Kdward  III.  Be- 
fore twenty  lines  had  been  spoken,  the  still  small  voice 
aforesaid  was  whispering  '  'Shakespeare' ' , — and  even  as 
the  recitation  proceeded  the  whisper  grew  louder  and 
more  emphatic,  Shakespeare !  Manifestly  Shakespeare ! 
Shakespeare  all  over !  Shakespeare  without  the  shadow 
of  a  doubt!  .  .  .  What  other  poet  has  at  his  com- 
mand such  unchastened  wealth  of  imagery,  such  well- 
nourished  smoothness  of  style?  If  this  be  not  Shake- 
speare's work,  all  I  can  say  is  that  some  nameless  poet 
has  out-Shakespeared  Shakespeare'".  Well,  that  is 
right,  for  Marlowe  was  the  strongest  member  of  the 
Shakespeare  syndicate  up  to  1598,  and  the  most  pro- 
lific. 

Wendell  says,  71:  '  'The  weight  of  opinion  seems 
to  favor  the  supposition  that  Greene,  Peele,  Kyd, 
and  Marlowe  had  a  hand  in  them"  (/.  e.  the  3  parts 
of  Henry  VI),  "and  so  far  as  Shakespeare  touched 
them,  it  was  by  way  of  collaboration,  interpolation  or 
revision."  Curious  idea,  that  an  untaught  country 
boy,  equipped  with  nothing  at  all  but  an  unintelligible 
patois,  should  have  undertaken,  or  should  have  been 
employed,  to  revise  plays  written  by  past  masters  of 
the  art  of  play  writing,  every  one  of  them  a  graduate 


WIUJAM   SHAKSPER   ON   ENTERING   LONDON.       59 

of  one  of  the  great  universities,  and  one  of  them 
Marlowe?  *  The  proposition  that  Shake- scene  was  in- 
tended by  Greene  for  the  player  Shaksper  may  as  well 
be  dropped  from  consideration  if  the  foregoing  are  the 
only  grounds  in  its  favor. 

As  I  have  said,  Phillipps  brings  young  Shaksper  to 
London  in  1585,  or  1586,  he  is  not  certain  which; 
thinks  he  returned  to  Stratford  on  a  visit  in  1587,  and 
he  tells  us  there  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence  respecting 
his  career  between  1587  and  1592.  Fleay,  8,  makes 
Shaksper  leave  Stratford  (the  first  time)  "in  or  about 
1587  in  company  with  Lord  Leicester's  players,  who 
are  known  to  have  visited  Stratford  in  1587.  There 
is  not  one  iota  of  proof  of  this,  but  Mr.  Fleay  guesses 
it  must  have  been  so.  Shaksper  would  then  be  about 
23  years  of  age.  He  was,  according  to  Phillipps,  an 
ignorant  young  man,  "almost  destitude  of  polished  ac- 
complishments", wrho  so  far  had  "sow'd  cockles, 
reaped  no  corn' ' ;  and  all  the  authorities  who  accept 
the  traditions  agree  that  at  first  he  got  employment  in 
London  under  very  humble  terms.  He  held  horses 
outside  the  play  house  door,  then  was  "servitour"  in- 
side, and  so  worked  his  wray  up.  That  is  one  view  of 
William  Shaksper.  Fleay,  on  the  other  hand,  starts 
him  at  once  on  reaching  London,  in  1587,  studying, 
acting  and  learning  how  to  write  plays.  He  gives  no 
authority  whatever  for  doing  so,  but  the  exigencies  of 
the  case  make  it  necessary  that  Shaksper  should  begin 

*  "  It  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  all  these  founders  and  first 
builders-up  of  the  regular  drama  in  England,  were,  nearly  if 
not  absolutely  without  an  exception,  classical  scholars,  and  men 
who  had  received  a  university  education".  Craik.,Bng.  I^it. 


60         SHAKSPKR  NOT  SHAKKSPKARK. 

at  once.  Of  course  Mr.  Fleay  throws  aside  every 
tradition  and  testimony.  If  William  Shaksper  wrote 
the  Shakespeare  plays,  wrhich  began  to  appear  at  least 
as  early  as  1589,  or  within  two  years  after  he  got  to 
London,  no  time  wras  to  be  lost.  So  we  read  in  the 
Hist.  Lond.  Stage,  74,  this:  "During  these  seven 
prentice  years  (1587  to  1594)  while  Shaksper  was 
learning  his  business  as  a  stage  actor  from  Allen  and 
Burbage,  and  his  business  as  a  playwright  from  his 
coadjutors,  Marlowe  and  Peele,  etc." 

In  the  Life,  9,  Mr.  Fleay  makes  Shaksper  join 
Leicester's  players  at  Stratford  in  1587,  and  (10) 
comes  "to  London  as  a  poor  strolling  player  ;  he  was 


associated  already  with  the  most  noted  comedians  of 
the  time,  Kempe  and  Pope ;  and  in  Allen  he  had  the 
advantage  of  studying  the  method  of  the  greatest 
tragic  actor  that  had  yet  trod  the  Knglish  stage.* 

*  I  give  cuts  of  two  of  Shaksper 's  player  associates,  William 


SHAKSPKR  ON  ENTERING  CONDON.   6 1 


But  lie  did  not  remain  content  with  merely  acting ; 
he  now  commenced  as  author. ' '  An  instance  of  what 
Mr.  Fleay  himself  styles  a  mischievously  fertile  im- 
agination as  flagrant  as  anything  in  Baynes.  By 

Kemp,  or  Kempe,  and 
Richard  Tarleton;  Kempe 
is  said  by  Shaksper's  bi- 
ographers to  have  been 
his  instructor  in  comedy. 
The  cut  of  him  is  copied 
from  Rolfe's  "Shakes- 
peare the  Boy",  which  is 
a  fac-simile  of  a  \vood 
cut  prefixed  to  Kempe 's 
"Nine  Daies  Wonder'. 
It  discovers  "the  most 
noted  comedian"  as  a  jig 
dancer,  cutting  monkey 
shines.  (Cut,  preceding 
page). 

The  cut  of  Tarleton  I 
have  taken  from  a  paper 
by  Alexander  Cargill,  in 
Scribner's  Magazine  for 
May,  1891,  "from  a  draw- 
ing published  in  1792,  in 
Mr.  (Henry)  Irving's  col- 
lection." 

On  page  166,  Hist.  lyon- 
don  Stage,  Mr.  Fleay  tells 
us  that  "the  time  for 
Tarleton  and  Kempe  clowneries  and  jigs  had  passed,"  etc. 
Why  not  Shaksper  clowneries  as  well  ?  If  one  of  these  pretty 
fellows  was  his  instructor,  and  the  other  his  associate,  it  is 
altogether  probable  that  a  true  portrait  of  William  Shaksper 
would  be  close  to  the  pattern  of  Tarleton  and  Kernpe. 


62         SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

1592,  Mr.  Fleay  represents  him  as  "a  rising  drama- 
tist," that  is  a  writer  of  plays.  If  that  were  so,  of 
course  it  would  follow  that  years  must  already  have 
passed  in  essaying  to  write  plays,  and  we  are  informed 
of  much  that  he  did  before  he  reached  that  elevation. 
In  1589  there  was  performed  the  first  play  which  he  is 
known  to  have  written.  '  'The  play  of  Love's  Labour ' s 
Lost  (first  performed  in  1589)  is  undoubtedly  'in  the  main 
the  earliest  example  left  of  Shakespeare' s  work"  p.  103. 
This  implies  that  in  Mr.  Fleay's  opinion  there  were 
earlier  plays — or  there  was  earlier  work — which  has 
not  come  down  to  us.  Most  likely  Mr.  Fleay  is 
correct,  if  by  Shakspere  we  are  to  understand  the 
author  of  the  plays.  Love's  Labour's  Lost  may  have 
been  his  first  dramatic  essay  left,  but  Mr.  Fleay  is 
talking  of  William  Shaksper,  the  Stratford  man,  the 
player,  and  that  is  altogether  a  different  matter,  "a 
horse  of  another  color,"  as  Shakespeare  says.  As 
Mr.  Fleay  puts  it,  this  ignorant  Stratford  clown, 
whom  Phillipps  has  told  us  about,  within  two  years 
after  he  enters  London,  at  which  entry  he  necessarily 
spoke  a  dialect  as  unintelligible  as  that  of  a  Yorkshire 
farmer  of  to-day,  during  the  whole  of  which  time  he 
was  employed  about  the  theater,  or  in  strolling  up  and 
down  England,  is  discovered  to  have  written  a  play  of 
high  life,  with  kings,  princesses,  lords,  ladies,  em- 
bassadors  as  almost  the  only  characters  ;  full  of  Latin 
and  French,  quotations  from  Virgil,  Horace,  and  Ovid, 
bristling  with  classical  allusions  and  with  Learned  dis- 
sertations of  philology  and  orthography  ;  '  'which  were 
ridiculous,"  as  Ben  Jonson  said  of  an  utterance  of 


WIUJAM    SHAKSPER   ON   ENTERING   I/DNDON.      63 

this  player  Shaksper.  The  modern  phrase  would  be — 
"Tell  that  to  the  marines." 

Horace  Walpole  asks:  "Why  are  there  so  few  gen- 
teel comedies,  but  because  most  of  them  are  written  by 
men  not  of  that  sphere  ?  Etheredge,  Congreve,  Van- 
brugh,  Gibber,  wrote  genteel  comedy  because  they 
lived  in  the  best  company;  Wycherley  and  Dryden 
wrote  as  if  they  had  only  lived  in  the  Rose  Tavern  ". 
That  is  sensible.  Shakespeare  tells  us:  "Thou  wilt 
not  utter  what  thou  dost  not  know".  What  could 
William  Shaksper  know  of  "that  sphere"?  Had  he 
"lived  in  the  best  company"?  On  the  contrary,  he 
lived  in  the  lowest,  most  debauched  and  vulgar  com- 
pany. The  comedies  of  William  Shakespeare  were 
"genteel  comedy",  and  showed  plainly  that  their  au- 
thor was  of  "that  sphere",  and  had  "lived  in  the  best 
company" — a  proof  that  ought  to  be  convincing  to 
every  one  that  the  player  had  no  hand  in  them. 

Mr.  Lee  also  believes  that  Lo  ve's  Labour 's  Lost  was 
Shakespeare's  first  play,  and  discourses  of  it  thus,  50: 

"The  subject-matter  suggests  that  its  author  had  al- 
ready enjoyed  extended  opportunities  of  surveying  Lon- 
don life  and  manners.  Love's  Labour 's  Lost  embodies 
keen  observation  of  contemporary  life  in  many  ranks 
of  society,  both  in  town  and  country,  while  the 
speeches  of  Biron  clothe  much  sound  philosophy  in 
masterly  rhetoric.  .  .  .  It  (the  plot)  is  not  known 
to  have  been  borrowed,  and  stands  quite  alone  in 
travestying  known  traits  and  incidents  of  current  so- 
cial and  political  life." 

Hazlitt,  on  L.  L.  L.,  says:  "The  style  savors  more 
of  the  pedantic  spirit  of  Shakespeare's  time  than  of  his 


64  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

own  genius;  more  of  controversial  divinity  than  of  the 
inspiration  of  the  muse.  It  transports  us  quite  as 
much  to  the  manners  of  the  court  and  the  quirks  of 
courts  at  law,  as  to  the  scenes  of  nature. 
Shakespeare  has  set  himself  to  indicate  the  tone  of 
polite  conversation  then  prevailing  among  the  fair,  the 
witty  and  the  learned.  .  .  .  The  observations  on 
the  use  and  abuse  of  study,  and  on  the  power  of 
beauty  to  quicken  the  understanding  as  well  as  the 
senses,  are  excellent".  The  husband  of  Ann  Whately 
was  a  likely  fellow  to  be  writing  on  the  power  of 
beauty  to  quicken  the  understanding,  and  the  igno- 
ramus to  be  writing  on  the  use  and  abuse  of  study! 
And  the  idea  that  a  first  effort  of  a  youth  of  his  caliber 
and  experiences  would  treat  of  the  usages  of  polite 
society,  or  should  be  filled  with  controversial  di- 
vinity or  quirks  of  courts  of  law,  is  too  nonsensical  for 
consideration.  If  the  play  in  question  appeared  in 
1589,  it  was  written  before  that  date,  and  by  another 
hand  than  that  of  Stratford,  ex  necessitate,  and  the 
question  of  the  authorship  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  is 
settled  right  here  and  once  for  all,  so  far  as  William 
Shaksper  is  concerned.  Mr.  Fleay  continues  (13): 
"Love's  Labour 's  Won  must  have  been  written  about 
the  same  time  as  Love's  Labour  's  Lost,  and  before  the 
end  of  1590,  the  Comedy  of  Errors  probably  appeared 
in  its  original  form".  (On  p.  33,  Mr.  Fleay  tells  us 
that  Much  Ado  About  Nothing  which  appeared  in 
1598,  was  probably  a  re-cast  of  Love's  Labour's 
Won' ' ) .  In  1 59 1 ,  the  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona  and 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  "as  originally  written  by  Shake- 
speare and  some  coadjutor  were  most  likely  produced' ' , 


WILLIAM    SHAKSPER    ON    ENTERING    LONDON.       65 

That  is  to  say,  five  plays  appeared  between  1589  and 
1591,  anonymously,  acknowledged  by  no  author,  treat- 
ing, as  did  I^ove's  Labour's  Lost,  of  high  life,  in  Italy, 
Sicily  and  Asia,  which  commentators  have  chosen — 
without  one  spark  of  evidence,  entirely  unsupported 
by  contemporary  testimony — to  attribute  to  a  practical 
butcher  who  fled  in  disgrace  from  Stratford  to  Lon- 
don in  1587;  who,  in  London,  earned  his  bread  as  a 
horse  boy,  or  as  attached  to  one  of  the  public  theaters, 
the  then  lowest  place  of  public  entertainment,  not  so 
elevated  in  tone  or  morals  as  is  the  average  variety 
show  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century.  And 
thousands  of  books,  big  and  little,  have  been  written  to 
uphold  this  remarkable  proposition,  that  learned  writ- 
ings can  issue  from  ignorance;  that  a  man,  who  in 
1585  to  1587,  was  "all  but  destitute  of  polished  ac- 
complishments", in  1859  was  publishing,  or  putting 
on  the  stage,  finished  five-act  plays,  all  of  them  de- 
scribing— what  ?  The  life  of  the  villagers  at  Stratford, 
rustic  life  anywhere,  the  experiences  of  a  boy  born 
and  brought  up  as  he  had  been  ?  Not  at  all ! 
But  describing  the  lives  of  princes  and  princesses, 
lords  and  ladies,  gentlemen,  courts,  camps,  for- 
eign cities,  foreign  manners,  customs  and  surround- 
ings; in  short,  experiences  of  high  life  of  every  sort, 
as  wrell  as  all  sorts  of  learning.  All  of  which  implies 
years  of  study,  of  travel,  and  of  time  spent  in  ac- 
quiring the  knowledge  to  be  eventually  made  use  of 
in  the  plays.  This  is  as  true  of  1587  as  it  would  be  of 
1900.  Mr.  Phillipps'  interval  of  five  years,  during 
which  there  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence  respecting 
the  career  of  young  Shaksper,  and  which  therefore 


66  SHAKSPKR   NOf  SHAKESPKARK. 

comes  accidentally  handy  for  the  period  of  his  educa- 
tion— because  he  either  got  it  then,  or  he  never  got  it 
at  all — will  not  serve.  Instead  of  getting  his  educa- 
tion between  1587  and  1592,  if  this  Stratford  youth 
was  the  real  William  Shakespeare,  by  1587,  he  had 
already  been  educated  to  the  highest  point,  and  was 
capable  of  writing,  and  actually  did  write,  one  play 
after  another  in  swift  succession,  so  that  five  had  ap- 
peared by  1591.* 

Now,  unless  we  are  prepared  to  cast  aside  all  the 
traditions  and  testimonies,  as  Mr.  Fleay  does,  and 
start  with  a  blank  page  as  regards  William  Shaksper, 
we  have  reached  an  obstacle  which  is  insurmountable, 
that  makes  it  absolutely  impossible  that  William,  the 
aforesaid,  had  anything  to  do  with  the  production  of 
these  plays. 

Professor  T.  I,.  Baynes,  also,  the  editor  of  the  last 
edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  Brittanica,  and  the  author 
of  the  wonderful  life  of  Shakspere  therein,  seeing  the 
catastrophe  imminent,  saves  himself  and  his  baggage 
by  throwing  overboard  the  testimonies  and  traditions 
and  putting  helm  up.  By  this  operation  he  escapes 
embarrassing  difficulties.  "I  know  nothing  about 
William  Shaksper,  he  is  a  name  and  nothing  else.  I 
know  nothing  of  William  Shakespeare.  Go  to;  I 


*  Wendell  says,  p.  97:  "In  the  course  of  six  years  at  least, 
the  years  from  23  to  29,  he  had  certainly  succeeded  in  establish- 
ing himself  as  an  actor,  in  writing,  wholly  or  in  part,  at  least 
seven  noteworthy  plays  which  have  survived  (Titus  Andronicus, 
3  of  Henry  VI,  Love's  Labour 's  Lost,  The  Comedy  of  Errors, 
The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona)  and  in  composing  at  least  one 
poem  of  the  highest  contemporary  fashion," 


WIUJAM  SHAKSPKR  ON  ENTERING  LONDON.   67 

will  create  a  half  human,  half  superhuman  man;  the 
kind  of  man  the  true  Shakespeare  must  have  been 
as  evidenced  by  his  works,  and  pretend  that  he  came 
from  Stratford,  and  will  call  him  William  Shakspere". 

Mr.  Fleay's  books  were  not  written  to  prove  that 
William  Shaksper  wrote  the  Shakespeare  plays,  but  to 
show  from  internal  evidence  of  the  plays,  in  wrhat 
chronological  order  they  must  have  been  written. 
The  books  evince  prodigious  labor,  and  Mr.  Fleay  is 
one  of  the  wisest  of  the  Shakespeare  commentators. 
He  is  probably  right  as  to  the  chronology,  but  if  he 
had  only  told  us  what  the  connection  was  between  the 
plays  and  the  player  William  Shaksper,  he  would  have 
added  a  thousand  fold  to  the  value  of  his  book.  L,ike 
all  the  rest  of  these  commentators,  he  assumes  the 
connection,  but  right  there  the  Shaksper  case  breaks 
down.  No  man  has  ever  proved  or  shown  such  a  con- 
nection, or  the  probability  of  one,  and  consequently 
there  has  been  a  vast  deal  of  threshing  of  straw. 

In  1593,  the  Venus  and  Adonis  was  published  by 
Richard  Field,  in  whose  name  it  had  been  entered  in 
the  Stationer's  Register,  (equivalent  to  copyright  of 
later  ages).  There  was  no  name  of  author  on  the 
title-page,  but  the  Dedication  was  to  the  Karl  of 
Southampton,  and  was  signed  "William  Shakespeare". 
This  is  the  first  appearance  of  the  name  Shakespeare 
in  literature.  It  was  the  pseudonym  of  a  true  poet 
and  of  a  scholar,  besides  a  man  of  the  world.  The 
author  was  no  unlettered  boy  brought  up  among  the 
peasants  of  the  back  counties.  In  the  year  1594,  the 
lyucrece  issued  by  the  same  publisher,  also  without 


68  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPKARK. 

name,  and  also  dedicated  to  Southampton.  As  Dr. 
Morgan  says,  "almost  everybody  in  those  days  dedi- 
cated things  to  Southampton;  the  dedication  of  poems 
to  Southampton  was  rather  the  rule  or  the  fashion  of 
the  time  than  otherwise."  It  did  not  imply  acquaint- 
ance, much  less  intimacy,  with  his  lordship. 

"These  poems  are  the  composition  of  an  educated 
mind,  and  of  an  author  who  was  imbued  'with  the  true 
poetic  spirit.  The  Venus  and  Adonis  is  suggested  by 
Ovid's  story  in  the  Metamorphoses  X,  XII  to  XV; 
but  there  is  no  such  servile  following  of  its  original  as 
would  have  been  adopted  by  a  novice  who  was  reading 
it  for  the  first  time  in  a  translation.  On  the  contrary, 
the  author  strikes  out  from  it  with  a  boldness  only  to 
be  expected  from  an  intimate  familiarity  with  the 
original."  T.  W.  White,  27. 

Mr.  White  gives  reasons  which  prove  to  him  that 
both  poems  were  written  by  Marlowe,  Marlowe  had 
the  education,  temperament,  and  ability  to  write  such 
a  poem  as  Venus  and  Adonis.  William  Shaksper  had 
not  the  education,  vocabulary,  ability,  or  experience  to 
write  such  a  poem,  even  had  he  had  the  capacity. 

"The  place  and  value  of  Christopher  Marlowe  as  a 
leader  among  English  poets,  it  would  be  almost  impos- 
sible for  historical  critics  to  overestimate.  To  none  of 
them  all  perhaps  have  so  many  of  the  greatest  among 
them  been  so  deeply  and  so  directly  indebted.  He 
first,  and  he  alone,  guided  Shakespeare  into  the  right 
way  of  work;  his  music,  in  which  there  is  no  echo  of 
any  man's  before  him,  finds  its  own  echo  in  the  more 
prolonged  but  hardly  more  exalted  harmony  of  Milton. 
He  is  the  greatest  discoverer,  the  most  daring  and  in- 


WIUJAM  SHAKSPER  ON  ENTERING  CONDON.  69 

spired  pioneer  in  all  our  poetic  literature.  Before  him, 
there  was  neither  genuine  blank  verse,  nor  a  genuine 
tragedy  in  our  language.  After  his  arrival  the  way 
was  prepared,  the  paths  were  made  straight  for  Shake- 
speare." Swinburne,  Enc.  Brit.,  "Marlowe." 

Up  to  the  beginning  of  1598,  seventeen  of  the  now 
received  Shakespeare  plays  had  been  performed,  the 
commentators  assure  us,  and  seven  of  these  had 
been  printed,  all  anonymously.  When  the  first  play 
published  bearing  the  name  of  Shakespeare  issued, 
Love's  Labours  Lost,  in  1598,  the  title  page  did  not 
claim  that  it  was  written  by  Shakespeare,  but  that  it 
was  "newly  corrected  and  augmented  by  W.  Shake- 
spere".  So  it  was  not  till  nine  or  ten  years  had 
passed  after  the  first  of  these  plays  had  been  performed 
at  the  theater,  (according  to  Mr.  Fleay's  chronology) 
that  the  name  Shakespere,  or  Shakspere,  or  Shake- 
speare, was  ever  seen  on  the  title  page  of  a  play. 

I  have  not  the  least  idea  that  Love's  Labours  Lost 
was  written  by  the  man  who  wrote  Hamlet;  or  that 
the  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona  was  written  by  that 
man,  or  that  the  first  and  last  of  these  were  written  by 
the  same  man;  or  that  the  Comedy  of  Errors  was 
written  by  him;  or  that  Troilus  and  Cressida  was 
written  by  the  author  of  any  one  of  the  four.  An 
extended  analysis  of  these  plays  shows  that  the 
vocabulary  of  each  is  as  distinct  as  if  Jones  and  Smith 
and  Brown  and  Robinson  had  written  them.  Young 
and  inexperienced  authors  do  not  write  books  in  differ- 
ent styles,  with  different  vocabularies.  When  one  has 
read  Diana  of  the  Crossways,  he  has  the  life-style  of 
George  Meredith;  Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd,  of 


70  SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

Hardy;  Pride  and  Prejudice,  of  Jane  Austen;  Waver- 
ley,  of  Scott.  It  was  thought  a  surprising  thing  when 
Bulwer  was  found  to  have  written  The  Caxtons.  He 
changed  his  style  completely,  but  he  was  a  writer  of 
long  experience,  and  deliberately  set  himself  to  the 
task.  Bulwer  died  an  elderly  man,  but  he  did  not 
live  long  enough  to  enable  him  to  discover  a  third 
style.  If  the  five  plays  above-named  as  attributed  to 
"Shakespeare"  are  in  five  different  styles,  (and  the 
critics  declare  them  so  to  be)  then  five  men  wrote 
them.  Meiklejohn  says  of  Shakespeare:  "He  has 
written  in  a  greater  variety  of  styles  than  any  other 
author.  'Shakespeare,'  says  Professor  Craik,  'has  in- 
vented twenty  styles.'  " 

Player  Shaksper  signed  his  name  in  a  different  style 
every  time  he  wrote  it,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  five 
extant  specimens  claimed  by  his  admirers  to  have 
come  from  his  pen,  although  two  of  them  were  written 
in  the  same  half  hour,  and  the  other  three  in  the  same 
ten  minutes.  That  is  proof  positive  that  four  of  the 
five  signatures,  at  least,  were  written  for  him  by  other 
persons.  If  the  Shakespeare  plays  exhibit  twenty 
different  styles,  that  is  proof  enough  that  no  one  man, 
and  no  dozen  men,  wrote  them.  I  agree  with  Mr. 
Reed,  who  says:  "It  is  evident  that  'Shakespeare' 
was  a  favorite  nom  de  plume  with  the  dramatic  wits 
of  that  age;"  in  proof  of  which  he  calls  to  mind  the 
many  plays,  not  printed  in  the  First  Folio,  which 
issued  for  years  under  the  name  of  William  Shake- 
speare.* 

*  Judge  Stotsenborg  says:  "The  facts  justify  the  student  in 
believing  that  the  plays  produced  in  the  Elizabethan  era,  gen- 


WILLIAM   SHAKSPER   ON   ENTERING   LONDON.       yi 

These  anonymous  plays  were: 

1.  Henry  VI,  2d  Part,  1594. 

2.  Henry  VI,  3d  Part,  1595. 

3.  Richard  II,  1597- 

4.  Richard  III,  1597- 

5.  Romeo  and  Juliet,  159 7. 

6.  Henry  VI,  ist  Part,  1596. 

During  the  next  years  certain  of  the  series  of  plays 
afterwards  called  "Shakespeare's"  were  printed  under 
the  name  either  of  Shakespeare  or  Shake-speare  (with 
a  hyphen);  while  others  of  the  same  series,  and  new 
editions  of  the  older,  anonymous,  plays  were  printed 
without  name.  Other  plays  which  were  not  included 
in  the  Folio  of  "the  collected  works  of  William  Shake- 
speare", in  1623,  and  which  are  not  to-day  attributed 
to  that  author,  bore  the  same  imprinted  name  of 
Shakespeare. 

erally  speaking,  were  the  work  of  collaborators.  I  get  this  from 
the  best  authority  of  that  period,  viz.,  the  diary  of  Philip 
Henslowe.  This  diary  contains  minute,  truthful,  and  valuable 
information  respecting  the  history  and  condition  of  the  English 
drama  from  1591  to  1609.  It  contains  the  names  of  plays  iden- 
tical with  or  very  similar  to  the  titles  of  the  Shakespeare  plays. 
It  nowhere  mentions  Shakspere's  name;  it  shows  that  the  En- 
glish dramatists  wrote  plays  and  sold  them  for  trifling  sums  to 
Henslowe;  it  shows  that  these  plays  thereafter  became  the  prop- 
erty of  Henslowe,  or  of  his  company  of  actors;  it  shows  that 
certain  dramatists  were  employed  and  paid  by  Henslowe  to  re- 
vise and  dress  and  adapt  the  popular  plays  so  purchased,  to  suit 
the  tastes  of  the  frequenters  of  the  theater;  and  it  also  shows 
that  the  principal  plays  were  composed  hurriedly  by  collabora- 
tors, by  two  or  three,  and  then  again  by  four,  five  or  six  play- 
writers,  who,  after  they  received  their  pay,  cared  nothing  more 
for  their  productions." — Ind.  News,  5th  May,  1897. 


72  SHAKSP^R   NOT   SHAKESPEARE). 

These  were : 

Locrine, 1595. 

Sir  John  Oldcastle,    .     .     .     .    '.     1600. 

Thomas  Lord  Cromwell,     .     .     .      1600. 

Kdward  III, 1600. 

The  Birth  of  Merlin,      ....      1600. 

Mucedorus, 1600. 

Merry  Devil  of  Edmonton,      .     .     1600. 

The  London  Prodigal,    ....     1605. 

Puritan  Widow  of  Watling  St. ,   .     1607. 

Arthur  of  Feversham,    ....     1608. 

Yorkshire  Tragedy,        ....      1608. 

Arraignment  of  Paris,  ....  1608. 
The  name  "Shakespeare"  was  used  for  the  work  of 
a  number  of  authors.  But  there  is  no  evidence  that 
it  was  put  on  the  title  page  of  a  play  by  any  authority 
other  than  that  of  the  printers.*  The  Venus  and  Lu- 
crece  had  been  popular,  and  had  run  through  many 
editions.  Apparently,  the  printers,  or  some  of  them — 
for  there  were  several  concerned — thought  that  the 
pseudonym  of  the  author  of  these  poems  was  a  good 
one  to  help  sell  plays,  and  clapped  on  their  books  the 
name  of  "William  Shakespeare."  In  1599,  Jaggard 
printed  as  '  'William  Shakespeare's' ' ,  a  volume  of  poems 
under  the  title  of  the  Passionate  Pilgrim.  This  con- 
tained four  sonnets  (by  Shakespeare)  and  one  poem 
from  Love's  Labours  Lost;  the  larger  part  of  the  vol- 
ume was  made  up  of  verses  by  Barnfeild  and  other 
authors.  Fleay,  Life,  137.  Collier  says,  Life,  6,  "The 

*Thus,  Lee,  301:  "The  sixteen  Quartos  were  publishers'  ven- 
tures, and  were  undertaken  without  the  co-operation  of  the 
author." 


WILLIAM   SHAKSPER   ON   ENTERING   LONDON.      73 

most  noticeable  proof  of  the  advantage  which  a  book- 
seller conceived  he  should  derive  from  the  announce- 
ment that  the  work  he  published  was  by  our  poet,  is 
afforded  by  the  title  page  of  his  dispersed  sonnets, 
which  was  ushered  into  the  world  as  'Shakespeare's 
Sonnets'  in  very  large  capitals,  as  if  that  mere  fact 
would  be  held  sufficient  recommendation."  * 

No  objection,  so  far  as  now  appears,  was  made  by 
anybody  having  an  interest  in  the  plays,  and  presently 
it  became  to  be  the  custom  to  print  under  the  same 
name,  and  the  world  accepted  this  sobriquet  as  the 
true  title  of  the  unknown  author  or  authors.  As  early 
as  1595,  it  had  apparently  been  suspected  that  the  au- 
thor of  the  Venus  and  Adonis  had  written  a  play,  for 
we  find  John  Weever,  in  that  year,  (Ing.  16),  pub- 
lishing some  lines  beginning 

"Honie-tong'd  Shakespeare,  when  I  saw  thine  issue, 
I  swore  Apollo  got  them  and  none  other, 


Rose — check't  Adonis 

Chaste  Lucretia 

Romea-Richard,  more  whose  name  I  know  not,"  etc. 


*  "Owing  perhaps  to  the  apathy  exhibited  by  Shakespeare 
(Shaksper)  on  this  occasion,"  i.e.  the  Jaggard  publication — "a 
far  more  remarkable  operation  in  the  same  kind  of  knavery  was 
perpetrated  in  the  latter  part  of  the  following  year  by  the  pub- 
lisher of  the  First  Part  of  the  Life  of  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  1600,  a 
play,  &c.  Although  this  drama  is  not  only  known  to  have  been 
composed  by  other  dramatists,  but  also  to  have  belonged  to  a 
theatrical  company  with  whom  Shakespeare  (Shaksper)  had 
then  no  connection,  it  was  unblushingly  announced  as  his  work 
by  the  publisher,  Thomas  Pavier.  Two  editions  were  issued  in 
the  same  jear  by  Pavier,  the  one  most  largely  distributed  being 
that  which  was  assigned  to  the  pen  of  the  great  dramatist  and 
another  to  which  no  name  was  attached."  H.-P.,  I,  180. 


74  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

What  the  Romea  was  does  not  appear.  It  could  not 
have  been  the  Romeo  and  Juliet  of  Shakespeare,  be- 
cause that  was  first  played  in  1596,  according  to  Phil- 
lipps,  and  the  first  quarto  of  the  play  bears  the  date 
1597.  The  Richard  may  have  been  Richard  III,  and 
if  that  and  the  poems  were  written  by  Marlowe,  Meres 
would  have  guessed  correctly. 

No  other  mention  of  the  name  (Shakespeare)  occurs 
until  1598,  when,  spelled  Shakespere,  it  appeared  for 
the  first  time  on  the  title  page  of  a  play,  Love's  Labour 's 
Lost.  Then,  that  same  year,  we  have  Francis  Meres 
attributing  by  their  names  twelve  plays  to  "Shake- 
speare", to- wit,  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  Comedy 
of  Errors,  Love's  Labour 's  Won,  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream,  Merchant  of  Venice,  King  John,  Titus  Andro- 
nicus,  seven,  none  of  which  had  been  published;  and 
Love's  Labour's  Lost,  Richard  II,  Richard  III,  Henry 
IV,  and  Romeo  and  Juliet,  five,  which  had  been  pub- 
lished anonymously,  with  the  exception  of  Love's  La- 
bour' s  Lost,  just  out.  In  the  same  connection,  Meres 
attributes  to  Shakespeare  the  Venus,  the  Lucrece,  and 
"his  sugred  sonnets  among  his  private  friends." 

Therefore,  up  to  1598,  nine  years  after  William 
Shaksper  is  credited  by  Mr.  Fleay  with  bringing  out 
the  play  of  Love's  Labour's  Lost,  "Shakespeare"  had 
been  mentioned  by  contemporary  writers,  Ingleby  being 
witness,  but  three  times;  once  by  an  anonymous  au- 
thor, in  1594,  who  spoke  of  Lucrece  only;  once,  in  1595, 
by  Weever,  who  spoke  of  the  poems,  and  also  of 
Romea-Richard;  once,  1595-6,  by  Carew,  who  com- 
pares Shakespeare  with  Catullus;  ("Will  you  read 
Virgil?  Take  the  Earl  of  Surrey.  Catullus?  Shake- 


WIUJAM  SHAKSPER  ON  ENTERING  LONDON.   75 

speare  and  Marlowe's  fragments", — referring  to  the 
poems).  That  is  all  to  Meres.  One  man,  namely, 
Weever,  in  1595,  suspected  that  the  hand  which  wrote 
the  Venus  also  wrote  Richard,  but  not  another  contem- 
porary in  the  years  up  to  1598  spoke  of  the  Shake- 
speare of  the  Venus  and  Adonis  as  the  writer  of  plays; 
and  certainly  no  one  hinted,  and  there  is  no  evidence 
extant  that  any  one  thought,  ("for  what  his  heart 
thinks,  his  tongue  speaks",  as  Shakespeare  says),  or 
dreamed,  that  it  was  a  player  at  a  public  theater,  one 
Shaksper  or  Shakspur  or  Shaksberd,  who  was  turning 
out  these  fine  things.  That  is  very  curious,  in  the 
light  of  the  modern  theory  of  the  authorship,  and  is 
suggestive.  It  shows  for  one  thing,  that  by  1598,  or 
within  eleven  or  twelve  years  after  the  player  Shaksper 
became  connected  with  the  theater,  there  was  no 
knowledge  and  no  claim  that  the  player  William  Shak- 
sper was  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  or  poems. 
According  to  Ben  Jonson  (Discoveries)  this  player  was 
a  rattle-headed  man,  often  talking  too  much,  and  thus 
making  himself  ridiculous — the  last  man  to  hide  his 
light  under  a  bushel.  Had  he  written  any  sort  of  a 
play,  he  would  have  cackled  everlastingly;  had  he 
been  capable  of  writing  a  Shakespeare  pla}',  he  would 
not  have  been  rattle-headed,  and  would  not  have  been 
found  in  the  company  of  those  players. 

Up  to  1598,  then,  the  Shaksper  myth  had  not  got  a 
start,  and  as  I  shall  in  due  time  show,  it  never  did  get 
a  start  till  years  after  the  player  was  dead,  or  in  1623, 
and  then  a  discreditable  one. 

As  to  player  Shaksper,  or  the  manager  of  the  Cur- 
tain Theater,  all  he  had  to  do  with  these  matters  was 


76  SHAKSP^R   NOT 

to  take  what  the  gods  provided.  Here  were  plays 
running  loose,  and  his  public  theater  might  find  in  one 
or  other  of  them  special  scenes  to  use  as  interludes,  or 
in  pantomine,  or  travesty,  that  would  amuse  an  igno- 
rant and  brutal  audience,  murders  by  wholesale,  or 
wholesale  ribaldry.  Had  he  been  either  writer  or 
owner  of  the  plays,  they  never  would  have  been 
printed.  It  was  not  to  the  interest  of  a  theater  that  its 
stock  of  plays,  interludes,  shows,  should  be  given  to 
the  public.  They  formed  the  capital  of  the  company 
and  were  guarded  with  jealous  care.*  Drake,  Part 
II,  chapter  7,  says:  "The  author  either  sold  the  copy- 
right of  his  plays  to  the  theater,  or  retained  it  in  his 
own  hands.  In  the  former  instance  .  .  .  the 
proprietors  of  the  theater  took  care  to  secure  the  per- 
formance of  the  piece  exclusively  to  their  own  com- 
pany," and  it  was  their  "interest  to  defer  its  publi- 
cation as  long  as  possible".  Where  a  play  was  sold 
to  the  theater,  and  the  booksellers  found  ways  to  put 
it  on  the  market,  the  manager  of  the  company,  who- 
ever he  was,  would  have  made  a  great  outcry  against 
such  a  wrong,  not  merely  a  wrong  but  a  robbery,  and 
although  there  was  no  copyright  at  that  day,  (Drake 
was  in  error  in  using  the  word  copyright),  he  had  his 
remedy  at  common  law.  Where  he  had  not  sold  the 
play,  but  retained  it  in  his  own  hands — had  the 
manager  been  also  the  author,  and  that  author  Wil- 
liam Shaksper,  of  the  Curtain  or  the  Globe — he 

*' ' '  The  play-house  authorities  deprecated  the  publishing  of 
plays  in  the  belief  that  the  dissemination  in  print  was  injurious 
to  the  receipts  of  the  theater. ' '  Lee. 


WIUJAM   SHAKSPER   ON    ENTERING   CONDON.       77 

certainly  would  have  protected  himself  against  the 
publishers. 

This  man  was  very  sensitive  in  his  pocket-nerve. 
After  he  had  become  rich,  if  a  neighbor  owed  him  two 
and  sixpen.ce,  he  would  hale  him  before  a  justice, 
and  for  a  little  larger  sum,  would  show  him  the  inside 
of  the  goal. 

Had  William  Shaksper  been  the  writer  or  owner  of 
one  of  these  plays,  it  would  never  have  been  printed 
while  he  was  connected  with  a  theater.  The  commen- 
tators tell  us  that  in  several  cases  the  published 
Quartos  are  the  best  authorities.  Gollancz  says  that 
the  second  Quarto  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  ' '  is  our  best 
authority  for  the  play",  though,  as  he  tells  us,  the 
text  of  the  First  Folio  was  taken  from  the  third 
Quarto  (1609).  Knight  says  of  the  same  play: 
"There  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  corrections, 
augmentations  and  emendations  of  the  second  edition 
(second  Quarto)  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  (1599)  were 
those  of  the  author.  We  know  of  nothing  in  literary 
history  more  curious  or  more  instructive  than  the  ex- 
ample of  minute  attention  as  well  as  consummate 
skill,  exhibited  by  Shakespeare  in  correcting,  aug- 
menting and  amending  the  first  copy  of  this  play".* 
If  then,  William  Shaksper  was  the  author  of  the  play 
in  question,  he  was  himself  supplying  the  booksellers 
with  a  carefully  revised  and  amended  copy  of  the  play 

*Mr.  Lee  says,  90:  "  Except  in  the  case  of  his  two  narrative 
poems,  Shakespeare"  (meaning  Shaksper),  "made  no  effort  to 
publish  any  of  his  works,  and  uncomplainedly  submitted  to  the 
wholesale  piracy  of  his  plays.  .  .  .  Such  practices  were  en- 
couraged by  his  passive  indifference. ' ' 


78         SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

instead  of  preserving  it  for  the  theater,  a  proceeding 
adverse  to  his  own  interest,  or  that  of  the  Curtain  or 
Globe — supposing  that  the  play  was  written  for  the 
Curtain  or  Globe,  or  was  ever  performed  at  either  of 
those  theaters. 

In  the  same  way,  the  second  Quarto  of  Hamlet 
(1604)  is  stated  by  Fleay  to  be  superior  to  the  Folio 
version,  and  to  be  '  'in  the  best  shape  fitted  for  private 
reading",  whilst  the  Folio  version  is  inferior, 
' 'shortened  for  stage  representation".  Plainly,  Wm. 
Shaksper,  as  manager  of  the  theater,  could  not  have 
consented  to  such  publication,  yet  if  he  was  the  au- 
thor, no  one  but  himself  furnished  the  printers  with 
the  manuscript  of  his  play  in  the  best  shape  fitted  for 
for  private  reading.  Heminge  and  Condell,  in  the 
preface  to  the  First  Folio,  are  made  to  say  that  the  plays 
given  in  that  volume  are  as  the  author  conceived  them, 
and  they  stigmatize  the  Quartos  as  stolen  and  surrep- 
titious, published  by  impostors.  Kvidently,  the  writer 
of  that  preface  held  that  Wm.  Shaksper  did  not  coun- 
tenance them,  and  had  no  interest  in  them. 

The  Venus  and  Adonis  is  prefaced  with  a  quotation 
of  two  lines  from  Ovid.  Dr.  Baynes,  Professor  in  St. 
Andrew's  University,  p.  107,  "Shakespeare  Studies", 
says  that  ' '  these  lines  are  taken  from  a  poem  of  which 
there  existed  at  the  time  no  English  version" ,  and  that 
"the  quotation  is  one  from  which  the  circumstances  of 
the  case  could  hardly  have  been  chosen  by  any  one  who  did 
not  know  the  original  well" .  I  agree  to  that  certainly. 
It  has  been  noted  by  the  commentators  that  to  dedicate 
a  work  at  that  day  to  a  noble  lord  without  special  per- 
mission would  have  been  a  great  piece  of  impertinence, 


WILLIAM   SHAKSPKR   ON   ENTERING   LONDON.       79 

and  in  fact  an  unheard  of  thing;  hence  it  has  been  in- 
ferred that  the  player  Shaksper  (assumed  to  be  the 
same  with  William  Shakespeare)  must  have  been  on 
friendly  terms  with  Southampton.  There  is  not  the 
least  evidence  that  one  ever  spoke  to  the  other.  Chet- 
tle's  line  ''that  divers  of  worship  have  taken  him  up", 
refers  to  Marlowe,  not  Shaksper,  as  the  Shaksperians 
have  been  fond  of  claiming  in  evidence  of  the  Strat- 
ford man's  familiarity  with  Southampton,  Essex  and 
others  of  the  nobility.  Fleay,  1 10. 

"In  the  sixteenth  century,  in  England,  a  great  and 
impassable  gulf  lay  between  the  quality,  the  gentry, 
the  hereditary  upper  class,  and  the  common  herd  who 
toiled  fora  living."  Donnelly,  55.  Of  the  common 
herd,  a  player  belonged  to  the  bottom  stratum,  de- 
spised, the  impersonation  of  everything  that  was  vile. 
Hence,  it  is  not  a  matter  of  wonder  that  there  is  no 
evidence  that  any  man  "of  worship"  ever  had  any 
acquaintance,  to  say  nothing  of  intimacy,  with  player 
Shaksper,  notwithstanding  current  impressions  to  the 
contrary. 

Malone,  in  his  Inquiry,  1796,  addressed  to  Lord 
Charlemont,  apropos  of  Ireland's  forged  familiar  cor- 
respondence with  Southampton  (letters  from  Wm. 
Shakspere  to  the  Lord,  and  vice  versa)*,  says,  p.  181  : 
"I  will  not  take  up  your  Lordship's  time  on  this  in- 

*  "An  Inquiry  into  the  Authenticity  of  certain  Miscellaneous 
Papers  and  Legal  Instruments  published  December  24,  1795,  and 
attributed  to  Shakspere,  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  Henry,  Earle  of 
Southampton  ;  by  Edmund  Malone,  Esq.,  London,  1796". 
This  book  is  an  exposure  of  the  Ireland  forgeries,  and  served 
the  purpose  thoroughly. 


80  SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

auspicious  commencement,  which  every  one,  at  all 
acquainted  with  the  manner  of  that  day,  knows  was 
not  the  language  of  a  nobleman  to  a  person  at  the  im- 
measurable distance  at  which  Shakspeare  stood  from 
Lord  Southampton.  Had  he  condescended  to  write  to 
our  poet,  he  would  without  doubt  have  begun  with 
Mr.  Shakspeare,  or  Good  Master  Shakspeare  or  Good 
William,  or  some  other  similar  form."  The  fact  that 
the  poems  were  dedicated  to  Southampton  indicates  no 
personal  acquaintance  with  that  nobleman  on  the  part 
of  the  poet,  but  the  enterprise  and  impudence  of  the 
publishers  rather. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  players  were  vagabonds 
by  law.  '  'As  play  acting  was  not  recognized  as  a  craft, 
they  (the  pla}^ers)  became  in  the  eye  of  the  law  rogues 
and  vagabonds,  men  with  no  obvious  means  of  liveli- 
hood, and  as  such,  liable  to  be  taken  up  and  punished 
by  whipping,  fine  or  imprisonment.  Finding  them- 
selves in  this  predicament,  they  applied  to  the  Karl  of 
Leicester,  who  obtained  for  them  a  protecting  license 
from  the  Queen,  contingent  upon  their  good  behavior, 
and  liable  to  be  taken  away  at  any  time.* 

''Thus  the  Queen's  players  became  licensed  Vaga- 
bonds as  the  Queen's  Bedesmen  were  Licensed  Beg- 

*  An  act  of  1572  (14  KHz.)  enacted  that  "all  fencers,  bear- 
wards,  common  players  of  interludes  and  minstrels  (not  be- 
longing to  any  baron  of  this  realm,  or  to  any  honorable  other 
person  of  greater  degree)  wandering  abroad  without  the  license 
of  two  justices,  at  the  least  were  subject  to  be  grievously 
whipped  and  burned  through  the  gristle  of  the  right  ear  with  a 
hot  iron  of  the  compass  of  an  inch  about."  Enc.  Brit.,  9th  Ed. 


SHAKSPER  ON  ENTERING  LONDON.   8 1 

gars.  It  was  in  this  class  William  Shaksper  be- 
longed". Smith,  59.  "The  license  was  not  so  much 
a  mark  of  approbation,  but  of  toleration  ;  it  wras  not 
)so  much  to  secure  them  certain  privileges,  as  to  con- 
fine them  within  due  limits,  and  render  them  promptly 
amenable  to  the  law.  Thus  the  last  clause  in  the 
order  of  the  Privy  Council  openly  states  "that  for 
breaking  any  of  these  orders,  their  toleration  cease". 
Id.,  68.  "Wm.  Shakspere  connected  himself  with  a 
class  that  was  held  in  the  utmost  contempt",  and  "the 
theater  with  which  he  was  connected  was  the  Public 
Theater — the  lowest  place  at  which  dramatic  entertain- 
ments were  then  represented."  Id.,  145. 

Dr.  Ingleby  says  of  the  players  of  that  day  :  "Let 
their  lives  be  as  cleanly  and  their  dealings  as  upright 
as  they  might,  they  were  deemed  to  be  sans  aveu,  run- 
aways and  vagabonds. ' '  * 

*  More  or  less  of  this  prejudice  prevailed  two  hundred  years 
later.  In  Mrs.  Thrale's  Memoirs,  we  read:  "On  the  announce- 
ment of  her  marriage  (with  Fiozzi,  an  Italian  gentleman,  but  a 
professional  musician)  .  .  .  people  of  our  day  can  hardly  form 
a  notion  of  the  storm  of  obloquy  that  broke  upon  her.  To  ap- 
preciate the  tone  taken  by  her  friends,  we  must  bear  in  mind 
the  social  position  of  Italian  singers  and  musical  performers  at 
the  period.  'Amusing  vagabonds'  are  the  epithets  by  which 
Lord  Byron  designated  Catalini  and  Naldi  in  1809,  and  such  is 
the  light  in  which  they  were  undoubtedly  regarded  in  1784. 
.  .  .  Lord  Macaulay  says  that  she  fled  from  the  laughter 
and  hisses  of  her  countrymen  and  countrywomen  to  a  land 
where  she  was  unknown."  .  .  .  Further:  "Johnson  was 
writing  to  Hawkins  that  the  woman  he  had  once  called  his 
mistress  had  become  a  subject  for  her  enemies  to  exult  over, 
and  for  friends,  if  she  had  any  left,  to  forget  or  pity". 

Boswell   records  this  story  in    1777  : — "We  walked  over  to 


82          SHAKSPKR  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

This  opprobrium,  it  seems,  attached  also  to  the  writers 
of  plays:  "Of  the  contempt  entertained  for  the  actor's 
profession,  some  fell  to  the  share  of  the  dramatist; 
'even  Lodge',  says  Dr.  Ingleby,  'who  had  indeed  never 
trod  the  stage,  but  had  written  several  plays,  and  had 
no  reason  to  be  ashamed  of  his  antecedents,  speaks  of 
the  vocation  of  the  play-maker  as  sharing  the  odium 
attached  to  the  actor'  ".  Bnc.  Brit.,  Drama. 

Fleay,  Hist.,  206,  says:  "The  statute  of  39  KHz. 
(1587)  had  expressly  included  'common  players'  among 
the  persons  whom  noblemen  might  license  (i.  e.  to 
stroll,  travel),  and  so  had  the  statute  of  14  KHz.  (1572)." 
But  the  statute  of  i  James  (1604)  changed  this.  It 
"enacts  that  noble  personages  shall  authorize  none  to 
go  abroad  (i.  e,  to  stroll).  From  1604  onward  any 
such  strollers  were  ranked  as  vagabonds  and  sturdy 
beggars,  along  with  gipsies,  minstrels,  and  pedlars." 

Froude,  Hist.  Kng.,  ch.  i,  says:  "It  was  the  ex- 
pressed conviction"  (through  the  vagrant  Acts  of 
Henry  and  Elizabeth)  "of  the  English  nation,  that  it 
was  better  for  a  man  not  to  live  at  all  than  to  live  a 
profitless  and  worthless  life.  The  vagabond  was  a  sore 

Richardson's,  and  I  wondered  to  find  him  displeased  that  I  did 
not  'treat  Gibber  with  more  respect.'  " 

Johnson  : — "Now,  sir,  to  talk  of  respect  for  a  player."  (Smil- 
ing disdainfully. ) 

Boswell : — "There,  sir,  you  are  always  heretical;  you  never 
will  allow  merit  to  a  player". 

Johnson  : — "Merit,  sir,  what  merit?  Do  you  respect  a  rope- 
dancer  or  a  ballad-singer  ?  .  .  What,  sir,  a  fellow  who  claps 
a  hump  on  his  back,  and  a  lump  on  his  leg,  and  cries  'I  am 
Richard  the  Third'?  Nay,  sir,  a  ballad-singer  is  a  higher  man," 
etc.,  etc. 


SHAKSPKR  ON  ENTERING  LONDON.   83 

soot  upon  the  commonwealth,  to  be  healed  by  a  whole- 
some discipline  if  the  gangrene  was  not  incurable;  to 
be  cut  away  with  the  knife  if  the  milder  treatment  of 
the  cart  whip  failed  to  be  of  profit." 

'  'The  Venus  and  Adonis  is  the  most  carefully  pol- 
ished production  that  Willliam  Shakespeare's  name 
was  ever  signed  to;  and  moreover,  as  polished,  ele- 
gant and  sumptuous  a  piece  of  rhetoric  as  English  let- 
ters have  ever  produced".  Morgan,  41. 

It  is  a  strange  thing,  and  the  more  so,  inasmuch  as 
the  young  Shaksper  could  have  known  no  other  lan- 
guage than  the  Warwickshire  patois  when  he  went  to 
London,  that  in  the  Venus  and  Adonis  there  is  not 
one  word  exclusively  of  Warwickshire.  "The  people 
of  Warwickshire  spoke  a  patois  as  different  from  the 
English  of  the  London  Court,  as  the  Lowland  Scotch 
of  Burns  is  to-day  different  from  the  English  of  West- 
minster". Donnelly,  43.  If  any  dialect  words  at 
all  were  used  in  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  they  are  com- 
mon to  many  counties,  or  are  classical  English.  "It 
further  appears  that  there  are  in  this  entire  poem 
of  1194  verses,  scarcely  a  score  of  words,  to  compre- 
hend which,  even  to  the  most  ordinary  English  scholar 
of  to-day,  would  need  a  lexicon.  But  on  examining 
these  words,  it  will  be  found  that  they  are  early  En- 
glish, mostly  classical,  never  in  any  sense  local  or 
sectional."  Morgan's  Venus  and  Adonis,  A  study  in 
the  Warwickshire  dialect",  152:  "Could  Venus  and 
Adonis  have  been  written  by  one  Warwickshire  born 
and  bred,  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  who  had  not  been 
first  qualified  by  drill  in  the  courtly  English  in  which 
we  find  that  poem  written?  A  man  of  education  and 


84  SHAKSPKR   NOT    SHAKKSPKARE. 

culture,  practised  in  English  composition,  may  forge 
the  style  of  a  letterless  rustic.  Thackeray  has  done 
this,  and  Lowell,  and  Dickens,  and  hundreds  of  others. 
But  could  a  letterless  clown  forge  the  style  of  a  gen- 
tleman of  culture?  Tennyson  could  write  the  'North- 
ern Farmer'  in  Lincolnshire  dialect.  But  could  a 
Lincolnshire  farmer,  who  knew  nothing  of  any  ver- 
nacular except  the  Lincolnshire,  have  written  the 
Princess  or  In  Memoriam?"  Id.  139.  A  good  deal 
has  been  said  in  Shakespeare  Society  gatherings,  or  in 
lectures  on  Shakespeare,  about  the  use  of  the  War- 
wickshire dialect  in  the  plays,  the  inference  being  that 
no  one  but  a  Warwickshire  man  could  have  written 
them.  I  have  quoted  Dr.  Morgan's  valuable  book  on 
the  Warwickshire  dialect  in  Venus  and  Adonis  to 
the  effect  that  there  is  not  in  the  entire  poem  one 
word  exclusively  Warwickshire.  As  to  the  plays, 
Dr.  Morgan,  10,  says:  "The  Shakespeare  plays  con- 
tain not  only  Warwickshire,  but  specimens  of  about 
every  other  known  English  dialect.  .  .  .  The 
condition  in  life  implied  by  a  man's  employment  of 
one  patois  would  seem  to  dispose  of  the  probability  of 
his  possessing  either  the  faculties  or  the  inclination  of 
acquiring  a  dozen  others.  The  philologist  or  archae- 
ologist may  employ  or  amuse  himself  in  collecting 
specimens  of  dialect  and  provincialisms.  ...  In 
the  plays,  where  the  Shakespearean  character  happens 
to  be  a  Warwickshirean,  he  will  be  found  to  speak 
that  dialect,  and  not  otherwise.  ...  In  these 
plays,  however  a  Roman  or  a  Bohemian  may  use  an 
English  idiom,  there  is  no  confusion  in  the  dialects 
when  used  as  dialects,  and  not  as  vernacular,  The 


WIUJAM   SHAKSPER  ON   ENTERING   LONDON.      85 

Norfolk  mail  does  not  talk  Welsh,  nor  the  Welshman 
Leicestershire;  nor  does  the  Warwickshire  man  use 
Welsh-English." 

One  of  Dr.  Morgan's  conclusions  (149)  is  this:  "That 
the  Shakespeare  Works  are  a  storehouse  of  Eliza- 
bethan English  in  all  of  its  many  varieties  and  varia- 
tions, its  dictions,  vernaculars  and  dialects,  from  the 
most  refined,  splendid  and  courtly  to  the  rudest  and 
crudest".  And  another  conclusion  is:  "That  the  poem 
Venus  and  Adonis  is  apparently  the  monograph  of  a 
poet  able  to  confine  himself  to  the  most  refined,  most 
splendid,  and  courtliest  of  these  dialects — and  to  resist 
any  temptation  of  vicinage,  heredity,  or  contemporary 
corruptions".  The  question  naturally  arises,  were  not 
these  works  therefore  beyond  the  possibility  of  Will- 
iam Shaksper  ? 

The  celebrated  picture  of  the  horse  in  Venus  and 
Adonis  is  "borrowed  word  for  word  from  Du  Bartas. 
Here  are  all  Shakespeare's  phrases  as  they  occur  in 
that  description,  and  in  brackets  those  of  his  original: 
Round-hoofed  [round-hoof] ;  short -jointed  [short-pas- 
terns] ;  broad  breast  [broad  breast] ;  full  eye  [full 
eye] ;  small  head  [head  but  of  middle  size] ;  nostrils 
wide  [nostrils  wide]  ;  high  crest  [crested  neck,  bowed]  ; 
straight  legs  [hart-like  legs] ;  and  passing  strong 
[strong] ;  thin  mane  [thin  mane] ;  thick  tail  [full 
tail] ;  broad  buttock  [fair  fat  buttocks] ;  tender  hide 
[smooth  hide]."  Quarterly  Review  (London),  No. 
356,  April,  1-894,  P-  348-  Now  Du  Bartas  was  a 
French  poet,  and  his  work  (on  Creation,  embracing 
said  description)  was  first  translated  into  English  in 
1598,  after  the  publication  of  the  Venus  and  Adonis. 


86         SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKKSPKARK. 

Was  it  likely  that  Du  Bartas,  in  the  original,  was  to 
be  found  in  Stratford,  that  "bookless  neighborhood", 
or  that  William  Shaksper  should  have  been  able  to 
read  it  if  it  were  ? 

Of  this  remarkable  poem,  Venus  and  Adonis,  Pro- 
fessor Baynes  said  in  Fraser's  Magazine,  1879-80: 
"On  becoming  firmly  established  in  his  new  career  as 
playwright  and  dramatic  proprietor,  he  (Shaksper) 
recalled  and  prepared  for  the  press  his  early  poetical 
studies,  Venus  and  Adonis,  and  lyucrece.  They  are 
wonderful  poems  to  have  been  produced  by  an  English 
youth — written  in  the  country  between  the  years  1580 
and  1586—7"  (that  is,  between  the  ages  of  16  and  22  or 
23  years,  during  which  time  the  boy  and  young  man 
was  leading  the  practical  life  of  a  butcher).  "The 
marvel  is,  that  they  should  have  been  produced  by  a 
'prentice  hand'  in  a  small  provincial  town.  ...  It 
(the  Venus  and  Adonis)  was  founded  upon  no  model, 
either  ancient  or  modern;  nothing  like  it  had  ever 
been  attempted  before,  and  nothing  compared  to  it  was 
produced  afterwards. ' '  He  quotes  Mr.  Collier  as  say- 
ing: "We  feel  morally  certain  Venus  and  Adonis  was 
in  being  prior  to  Shakspere's  quitting  Stratford.  .  .  . 
We  know  that  Shakspere  was  a  diligent  student  of 
Ovid's  methods  of  dealing  with  mythological  fable. 
The  full,  sensuous,  pictorial  treatment  of  his 
theme  in  Venus  and  Adonis  and  the  lyiicrece  is  thor- 
oughly Ovidiaii."  And  Mr.  Baynes  gives  several 
pages  to  quotations  from  these  poems  to  show  how 
close  to  Ovid  they  are.  Of  course,  the  nearer  they 
are  to  Ovid,  the  more  certain  it  is  that  young  Shak- 
sper had  nothing  to  do  with  them. 


WILLIAM   SHAKSPKR   ON   ENTERING   LONDON.       87 

Oil  the  other  hand,  Halliwell-Phillipps  says:  "It  is 
extremely  improbable  that  an  epic  so  highly  finished, 
and  so  completely  devoid  of  patois,  could  have  been 
produced  under  the  circumstances  of  his  then  domestic 
surroundings,  while,  moreover,  the  notion  is  opposed 
to  the  best  and  earliest  traditional  opinions."  I.  104. 

No  direct  testimony  has  come  to  us  from  William 
Shaksper's  contemporaries  about  his  theatrical  career. 
There  are  vague  traditions,  but  no  reliable  or  contem- 
porary evidence.  In  a  very  few  instances  he  is  alluded 
to  as  a  player,  but  as  to  his  playing  no  one  said  any- 
thing. Now  and  then  the  bare  mention  of  his  name 
as  connected  with  a  company  or  a  theater  occurs,  but 
no  further  information  is  given.  There  are  extant 
proofs  that  he  was  a  shareholder  in  the  Globe,  and 
that  he  retired  to  Stratford  about  1610,  a  rich  man. 
As  to  writing  plays,  as  I  shall  in  due  time  show,  no 
one  during  his  life,  (to  1616)  or  after  his  death,  to  the 
publication  of  the  First  Folio  of  the  collected  plays  of 
William  Shakespeare,  1623,  testified  in  any  sort  of  lit- 
erature that  this  man  wrote  plays  of  any  kind.  The 
whole  course  of  his  life,  so  far  as  it  is  known,  was  in- 
consistent with  writing  of  plays.  The  myth  that 
William  Shaksper  was  the  man  who  wrote  the  plays 
called  "Shakespeare'^,  had  its  genesis  in  1623,  seven 
years  after  Shaksper's  death,  by  what  may  be  termed 
an  accident,  and  grew  with  exceeding  slowness — so 
much  so,  indeed,  that  by  the  time  it  had  fairly  become 
able  to  stand  alone,  it  was  too  late  to  get  at  any  facts 
ot  the  reputed  author's  life,  or  anything  whatever  con- 
nected with  the  plays.  All  that  could  be  learned  then 
was  from  the  remembrances  of  some  old  persons  of 


SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKKSPUARE. 

Stratford,  who  had  known  the  player  before  he  went 
to  lyondon,  or  after  he  carne  back,  or  from  traditions 
which  reached  the  next  generations.  Not  a  soul 
would  appear  to  have  been  then  alive  in  London  who 
could  give  any  personal  testimony  as  to  his  life  there, 
or  as  to  his  authorship  of  the  plays,  or  to  the  quality 
of  his  playing.  The  first  notes  by  any  inquirer  into 
the  facts  relating  to  Shaksper  were  made  in  1662  by 
Ward,  the  next  by  Aubrey,  at  about  1680.  Nothing 
in  the  memoranda  of  either  of  these  is  of  the  slightest 
bearing  on  the  authorship  of  the  Shakespeare  plays. 
The  next  inquirer  was  Dowdall,  in  1693,  who  talked 
with  the  old  sexton,  and  soon  after,  Da  vies  added  a 
few  biographical  notes  relating  to  Shaksper  in  a  manu- 
script biographical  dictionary  he  owned.  H.-P..  I,  p. 
1 1 .  That  is  all  that  was  picked  up  and  made  of  rec- 
ord during  the  rest  of  the  seventeenth  century  after 
Shaksper's  death,  and  what  there  is,  not  merely  gives 
no  help  towards  the  mystery  of  the  authorship  of  the 
plays,  but  is  entirely  of  a  character  to  forbid  the  sup- 
position that  the  Stratford  man  ever  had  anything  to 
do  with  the  plays. 

Next  came  Nicholas  Rowe  (1709,  ninety-three  years 
after  the  player  died),  who  "was  the  first  editor 
of  Shakespeare  entitled  to  the  name,  and  the  first  to  at- 
tempt the  collection  of  a  few  biographical  particulars 
of  the  immortal  dramatist."  (That  is  to  say  of  the 
Stratford  man,  William  Shaksper.)  Chambers'  Knc. 
Rowe  has  only  narrated  certain  gossip  on  the  authority 
of  Betterton — player  from  1661  to  1709 — and  D'Ave- 
nant,  manager  of  one  of  the  theaters  before,  and  again 
after,  the  civil  war.  From  these  two  men  Rowe  could 


WIIJJAM   SHAKSPER   ON   ENTERING   CONDON.      89 

pick  up  nothing  of  William  Shaksper's  London 
career,  but  this:  "He  was  received  into  the  company 
then  in  being  at  first  in  a  very  mean  rank,  but  his  ad- 
mirable wit,  and  the  natural  turn  of  it  to  the  stage 
soon  distinguished  him,  if  not  as  an  extraordinary 
actor,  yet  as  an  excellent  writer.  .  .  .  Though  I 
have  inquired  I  never  could  meet  with  any  further  ac- 
count of  him  this  way  than  that  the  top  of  his  per- 
formance was  the  Ghost  of  his  own  Hamlet. ' ' 

Betterton  made  a  special  journey  into  Warwick- 
shire "to  gather  up  what  remains  he  could",  and  all 
he  got  was  that  the  "latter  part  of  Shaksper's  life  was 
spent  in  the  retirement  and  conversation  of  his  friends; 
that  he  had  the  good  fortune  to  gather  an  estate  equal 
to  his  wish,  and  spent  some  years  in  his  native  Strat- 
ford"; and  "his  wit  and  good  nature  entitled  him  to 
the  friendship  of  the  gentlemen  of  the  neighborhood" , 
one  of  whom  was  "Mr.  Combe,  noted  for  his  wealth 
and  usury".  On  this  Combe,  Rowe  says  that  Shak- 
spcr  made  an  impromptu  epitaph:  "Ten-in-the-hun- 
dred  lies  here  ingraved' ' ,  etc. ,  the  doggerel  we  have 
all  heard  of,  and  he  adds,  "the  sharpness  of  the  satyr 
is  said  to  have  stung  the  man  so  severely  that  he  never 
forgave  it.  He  (Shaksper)  dy'd  and  was  bury'd,  and 
left  three  daughters.  .  .  .  This  is  what  I  could 
learn  of  any  note  relating  to  himself  or  family".* 

*  R.  G.  White,  Memoirs,  says  "that  Betterton  visited  Shak- 
sper's native  place  probably  between  1670  and  1675  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  gathering  materials  for  his  biography.  All 
that  he  learned  was  probably  embodied  by  Rowe  in  the  ac- 
count of  the  poet's  life  which  appeared  in  Rowe's  edition,  pub- 
lished in  1709." 


90         SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

Plainly,  there  was  nothing  to  be  gathered  either  in 
London  or  in  Stratford  of  the  least  moment.  The 
man  was  forgotten  in  London  before  his  bones  had 
moldered,  and  in  Stratford  was  remembered  only  as  a 
rich  man,  who  had  come  from  London  and  resided 
there  the  last  years  of  his  life. 

That  is  all  that  was  discovered  of  William  Shak- 
sper  or  related  of  him  till  Edmund  Malone  at  the  close 
of  the  eighteenth  century  began  to  investigate.  Mor- 
gan, 177,  says:  ''With  the  most  painstaking  care  he 
sifted  every  morsel  of  testimony,  searching  in  his- 
tories, chronicles,  itineraries,  local  traditions,  and  re- 
ports— but  in  vain.  The  nearer  he  came  to  the  Strat- 
ford man,  the  further  he  got  from  a  poet  and 
student".  Malone  says:  "That  almost  a  century 
should  have  elapsed  from  the  time  of  Shakespeare's 
(Shaksper's)  death,  without  a  single  attempt  to  dis- 
cover any  circumstance  which  should  throw  a  light  on 
the  history  of  his  life  or  literary  career  .  .  .  are 
circumstances  which  cannot  be  contemplated  without 
astonishment.  ...  Sir  William  Dugdale,  born  in 
1605,  and  educated  at  the  school  of  Coventry,  20 
miles  from  Strat ford-on- Avon,  and  whose  work  'The 
Antiquities  of  Warwickshire',  appeared  in  1646,  only 
thirty  years  after  the  death  of  our  poet,  we  might 
have  expected  to  give  some  curious  memorials  of  his 
illustrious  countryman.  But  he  has  not  given  us  a 
single  particular  of  his  private  life.  The  next  bio- 
graphical printed  notice  that  I  have  found  is  in  Ful- 
ler's 'Worthies',  folio,  1662;  in  'Warwickshire',  p. 
1 1 6,  where  there  is  a  short  account  of  our  poet,  fur- 
nishing very  little  information  concerning  him.  And 


WIUJAM  SHAKSPKR  ON  ENTERING  CONDON.   91 

again,  neither  Winstanley  in  his  'L,ives  of  the  Poets', 
1687;  I^angbaine,  in  1691;  Blount,  in  1694;  Gibbon, 
in  1699,  add  anything  to  the  meagre  accounts  of  Dug- 
dale  and  Fuller.  That  Anthony  Wood,  who  was  him- 
self a  native  of  Oxford  (in  the  same  county),  and  who 
was  born  about  fourteen  years  after  the  death  of 
Shakspere,  should  not  have  collected  any  anecdotes  of 
Shakspere  has  always  appeared  to  be  extraordinary. 
Though  Shakspere  had  no  direct  title  to  a  place  in  the 
'Athenae  Oxonienses,'  that  diligent  antiquary  could 
easily  have  found  a  niche  for  his  life  as  he  had  done 
for  many  others  not  bred  at  Oxford.  The  life  of 
Davenant  afforded  him  a  very  full  opportunity  for  such 
an  insertion." 

"Mr.  Malone,  in  spite  of  the  silence  of  the  authori- 
ties to  whose  page  he  had  recourse,  not  only  assumed 
all  he  could  not  find  authority  for,  but  undertook  to 
tell  us  the  precise  date  at  which  his  Stratford  lad  com- 
posed his  plays.  .  .  .  From  the  time  of  Malone, 
the  Shakespeare  making,  Shakespeare  mending  and 
cobbling,  have  gone  on  without  relaxation.  From 
Malone  downward,  the  Shakspereans  have  rejected 
every  shred  of  fact  they  found  at  hand,  and  weaved, 
instead,  their  warp  and  woof  of  fiction  around  a  vision 
of  their  own."  Morgan,  85,  et  seq. 

And  now,  nearly  three  hundred  years  after  William 
Shaksper  died,  commentators  have  arisen  who  under- 
take to  decide  out  of  their  own  consciousness  what  he 
did  or  did  not  do,  what  he  did  or  did  not  write,  and 
they  give  minute  details  of  his  school  life,  of  his  career 
in  London,  how  he  gained  the  knowledge  that  enabled 
him  to  write  the  Shakespeare  poems  and  plays,  and 


92  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

the  circumstances  under  which  each  play  was  com- 
posed, and  the  sequence  in  which  they  were  written. 
Mr.  Halliwell-Phillipps  is  sufficiently  inclined  to  give 
facts  which  are  no  facts,  in  his  'Outlines',  but  he  can- 
not stand  the  presumption  of  the  recent  biographers, 
and  relieves  his  soul  as  follows:  "But  in  like  manner 
as  there  have  arisen  in  these  days  critics  who,  'dispens- 
ing altogether  with  the  old  contemporary  evidences"- 
(that  hits  Baynes  and  Fleay  and  L,ee) — "can  enter  so 
perfectly  into  all  the  vicissitudes  of  Shakespeare's  in- 
tellectual temperament,  that  they  can  authoritatively 
identify  at  a  glance  every  line  that  he  did  write,  and 
with  equal  precision  every  sentence  that  he  did  not 
write" — (that  whacks  the  critics  who  give  out  silly 
twaddle  about  stop't  lines,  metrical  tests,  light  end- 
ings and  weak  endings) — "even  so  there  are  others  to 
whom  a  picture's  history  is  not  of  the  slightest  mo- 
ment, their  reflective  instincts  enabling  them  without  ef- 
fort or  investigation  to  recognize  in  an  old  curiosity 
shop  the  dramatist's  visage" — (the  Becker  death 
mask) — "that  once  belonged  to  the  author  of  Hamlet." 
I,  297.  And  the  old  gentleman  sorrowfully  adds: 
"I/ywlier  votaries  can  only  bow  their  heads  in  si- 
lence." 

No  one  during  William  Shaksper's  life,  or  after  his 
death,  1616,  up  to  1623,  is  known  to  have  declared  or 
written  in  book,  note-book,  or  letter,  that  he  was  the 
author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  or  even  of  a  single 
play  of  that  series;  and  there  is  not  the  least  evidence 
that  any  cultivated  man  of  that  day  ever  thought  that 
he  was  the  author.  Yet,  on  so  slight  a  foundation,  as 
a  distant  resemblance  in  the  sound  of  the  two  names, 


WIUJAM  SHAKSPER  ON  ^NT^RING  LONDON.     93 

Shaksper  and  Shakes-speare,  by  aid  of  surmises,  as- 
sumptions, lies  and  forgeries,  and  what  Fleay  calls 
*  'mischievously  fertile  imaginations",  a  vast  super- 
structure has  been  reared,  and  all  the  world  is  to-day 
admiring  it.  All  the  world  is  crediting  a  buffoon,  a 
degraded  strolling  player,  the  disciple  and  associate  of 
Kemp,  whose  portrait  Dr.  Rolfe  has  favored  us  with, 
with  the  authorship  of  the  greatest  works  of  imagina- 
tion, learning  and  philosophy  which  the  English  lan- 
guage can  show. 

The  Sultan  looked  over  the  way  one  morning  to 
discover  only  an  open  place  where  a  wonderful  palace 
had  delighted  him  the  day  before  and  for  many  days, 
and  the  Chronicle  says  that  he  rubbed  his  eyes,  but 
still  could  see  nothing;  he  stood  some  time  endeav- 
oring to  comprehend  how  so  large  a  palace  should  so 
suddenly  and  so  completely  vanish.  Some  day,  and 
not  long  hence,  the  Shaksper  piece  of  architecture 
will  dissolve  as  did  that  ancient  palace,  and  a  good 
many  critics  and  commentators  will  rub  their  eyes  in 
vain,  and  wonder  whether  they  have  not  been  in  a 
dream. 


94         SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  THEATERS  IN  LONDON. 

Let  us  look  at  the  theater  of  1580-1610,  during  the 
period  while  William  Shaksper  was  in  one  way  or  an- 
other connected  with  it,  and  see  what  sort  of  a  place  it 
was,  what  the  players  were,  the  character  and  style  of 
the  playing,  and  what  sort  of  audiences  frequented  it. 

Taine,  English  Literature,  ch.  2,  says:  "The  thea- 
ters were  great  and  rude  contrivances,  awkward  in 
their  construction,  barbarous  in  their  appointments, 
open  to  the  sky  as  to  the  pit,  admittance  to  which  was 
one  penny.  If  it  rained,  and  it  often  rains  in  London, 
the  people  in  the  pit,  butchers,  mercers,  bakers,  sailors, 
apprentices,  received  the  streaming  rain  on  their  heads. 
.  .  .  While  waiting  for  the  piece,  they  amuse 
themselves  after  their  fashion,  drink  beer,  crack  nuts, 
eat  fruit,  howl,  and  now  and  then  resort  to  their  fists  ; 
they  have  been  known  to  fall  upon  the  actors,  and 
turn  the  theater  upside  down.  .  .  .  When  the 
beer  took  effect,  there  was  a  great  upturned  barrel 
in  the  pit,  a  peculiar  receptacle  for  general  use.  The 
smell  rises  and  then  comes  the  cry  'Burn  the  juniper'! 
They  burn  some  in  a  plate  on  the  stage,  and  the 
heavy  smoke  fills  the  air.  .  .  .  Above  them  on 
the  stage  were  the  spectators  able  to  pay  a  shilling, 
and  gentlefolk.  If  they  chose  to  pay  an  extra  shilling, 
they  could  have  a  stool ;  if  there  were  not  stools 
enough,  then  they  lie  down  on  the  ground.  They 


THK  THKATKRS  IN  CONDON.          95 

play  cards,  smoke,  insult  the  pit,  who  give  it  back 
without  stinting,  and  throw  apples  at  them  into  the 
bargain.  .  .  There  were  no  preparations  or  per- 
spectives, few  or  no  movable  scenes.  A  scroll,  in  big 
letters  announces  to  the  public  that  they  were  in  Rome 
or  Constantinople,"  etc.,  etc.  The  burden  of  entertain- 
ing the  audience  rested  with  the  down,  and  the  female 
characters  were  personated  by  boys  and  men. 

Sir  Philip  Sidney,  describing  the  state  of  the  drama, 
and  the  stage  in  his  time,  about  1583,  says:  "Now 
you  shall  have  three  ladies  walk  to  gather  flowers,  and 
then  you  must  believe  the  stage  to  be  a  garden.  By 
and  by,  we  have  news  of  the  shipwreck  in  the  same 
place;  then  we  are  to  blame  if  we  accept  it  not  for  a 
rock.  Upon  the  back  of  that  comes  out  a  hideous 
monster  with  fire  and  smoke,  and  the  miserable  be- 
holders are  bound  to  take  it  for  a  cave  ;  while  in  the 
meantime  two  armies  fly  in,  represented  by  four  swords 
and  bucklers,  and  then  what  hard  heart  will  not  re- 
ceive it  for  a  pitched  field." 

"In  these  primitive  theaters  no  scenery  was  used  ; 
that  was  first  introduced  by  Davenant  after  the  Res- 
toration. A  curtain  met  the  spectators  on  entering; 
it  was  then  slowly  drawn  up;  and  he  saw  a  large  stage 
strewn  with  rushes,  the  side  walls  hung  with  arras; 
a  large  board  with  a  name  printed  on  it,  Westminster, 
Messina,  etc.,  informed  him  where  the  scenes  of  the 
play  to  be  performed  was  laid."  Enc.  Brit.,  Qth  Ed., 
Vol.  VIII,  420. 

Mr.  Phillipps  says,  I,  372:  "The  charge  for  admis- 
sion to  the  'Theater'  was  a  penny;  but  this  sum  merely 
entitled  the  visitor  to  standing  room  in  the  lower  part 


96  SHAKSPER   NOT 

of  the  house;  if  he  wanted  to  enter  any  of  the  gal- 
leries, another  penny  was  demanded.  .  .  .  The 
probability  is,  that  the  penny  alone  was  insufficient 
for  securing  places  which  would  be  endured  by  any 
but  the  lowest  and  poorest  class  of  auditors,  those  who 
stood  in  the  yard  or  pit,  and  were  thus  exposed  to  the 
uncertainties  of  the  weather."  Also  Vol.  I,  184: 
"There  was  no  movable  or  other  kind  of  scenery." 
On  page  183,  he  describes  the  Globe  theater,  built  in 
1600,  thus:  "The  building  was  constructed  of  wood, 
and  was  partially  roofed  with  thatch,  but  the  larger 
part  of  the  interior  was  open  to  the  sky.  In  the  ab- 
sence of  a  roof,  the  pit  and  much  of  the  other  part  of 
the  building  obliquely  exposed  to  the  rays  of  the  sun, 
both  visitors  and  actors  must  on  occasions  have  found 
the  Globe,  even  in  the  summer  time,  exceedingly  un- 
comfortable. The  extent  of  the  inconvenience  that 
was  endured  there  in  the  month  of  February,  and  in 
muggy  South wark,  almost  defies  conjecture.  .  .  . 
It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  observe  that  the  current  of 
air  engendered  by  the  open  roof  would  have  rendered  a 
performance  by  candle-light  an  impossibility.  There 
was  a  building  so  diminutive  -that  the  remotest  specta- 
tor could  hardly  have  been  more  than  a  dozen  yards  or 
thereabouts  from  the  front  of  the  stage,"  etc. 

Allowing  the  pit  to  have  been  twelve  yards  square 
in  area,  and  four  persons  to  the  yard,  there  would  be 
a  total  of  576  spectators  in  the  pit.  When  Mr. 
Phillipps  tells  us,  I,  98,  that  ten  thousand  spectators 
witnessed  the  performance  of  Henry  VI,  he  means 
that  on  successive  days  of  performance  the  number  of 
spectators  was  considerable.  On  page  177,  the  same 


THE;  THEATERS  IN  toNDON.  97 

author  speaks  of  the  "diminutive  boards  of  the  Cur- 
tain theater." 

Dowden,  47,  says:  "In  all  that  is  external  and 
mechanical,  the  theater  was  still  comparatively  rude. 
During  Shakspere's  connection  with  the  stage,  the 
buildings  used  for  dramatic  entertainment  were  of  two 
classes — public  theaters  and  those  which  were  called 
private.  The  public  theaters"  (the  sort  with  which 
William  Shaksper  was  connected  throughout  his 
career  in  London),  "except  over  the  stage  and  boxes, 
were  open  to  the  sky.  In  private  theaters,  the  per- 
formances commonly  took  place  by  the  light  of  candles 
or  cressets;  in  public  theaters,  by  daylight.  In  both, 
the  play  began  in  the  afternoon,  often  at  3  o'clock  and 
ended  at  5,  or  between  5  and  6.  The  spectators  who 
occupied  the  'pit  or  yard'  were  obliged  in  public 
theaters  to  stand;  in  private  theaters  they  were  seated. 
The  price  of  admittance  to  various  houses  varied  from 
one  penny,  or  two  pence,  to  two  shillings  or  half  a 
crown.  In  public  theaters,  young  men  of  rank  and 
fashion  were  accommodated  with  stools  on  each  side  of 
the  rush-strewn  stage,  where  their  attendants  waited 
upon  them  and  supplied  them  with  their  pipes  and 
tobacco.  Ladies  visiting  the  theaters  sometimes  wore 
masks.  Movable  scenery  had  not  then  been  de- 
vised. .  .  .In  front  of  the  stage  ran  curtains, 
which  could  be  drawn  and  withdrawn  as  was  needed, 
and  at  the  back  of  the  stage,  similar  curtains  occupied 
the  place  of  our  scenery,  and  could  be  used  for  exits 
and  entrances  of  the  actors.  Toward  the  rear  of  the 
stage  rose  an  upper  stage,  from  which,  when  it  seemed 
suitable,  part  of  the  dialogue  could  be  spoken.  .  .  . 


9&  SHAKSPKR   NOT 

This  upper  stage  might  be  imagined  the  walls  of  a 
besieged  city,  as  ill  King  John;  or  a  balcony,  as  in 
Romeo  and  Juliet;  or  as  a  stage  within  a  stage,  as  in 
the  first  scene  of  Hamlet." 

Fleay,  251,  says:  "The  prologue  of  the  play  of 
Henry  VIII  shows  that  the  extant  play  was  performed 
as  a  new  one  at  Blackfriars,  for  the  price  of  entrance, 
one  shilling,  (line  12),  and  the  address  to  'the  first 
and  happiest  hearers  of  the  town',  (line  24)  are  only 
applicable  to  the  private  house  in  Blackfriars;*  the 
entrance  to  the  Globe  was  two- pence,  and  the  audience 
at  this  public  house  was  of  a  much  lower  class." 

Collier  says,  vol.  I,  17:  "With  regard  to  mechanical 
facilities  for  the  representation  of  plays  before,  and 
indeed  long  after  the  time  of  Shakespeare,  it  may  be 
sufficient  to  state  that  our  theaters  were  merely  round 
wooden  buildings,  open  to  the  sky  in  the  audience 
part  of  the  house,  although  the  stage  was  covered  by 

*  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  private  theaters  were 
numerous.  In  fact  they  consisted  of  just  two: 

1.  "The  Singing  School  of  St.  Pauls,  opened  early  in  1600  or 
1599.     The  Paul's  boys  ceased  to  act  in   1607;  but  I  think  that 
the  children  of  the  King's  Revels,  who  succeeded  them,  were 
the  same  company,  under  another  name.     .     .     .     They  acted 
from  1607  to  1609.     Fleay,  Hist.  L,ond.  Stage,  163. 

2.  Blackfriars.     "The  freehold  of  the  house  which  was  trans- 
formed into  this  theater  was  purchased  by  James  Burbage  of  Sir 
W.  Moore,  4th  May,  1596.     .     .     .     There  is  no  trace  of  any 
performance  there  until  Nov.  1598,  when  one  of  Jonson's  plays 
was  acted  by  '  the  children  of  the  Blackfriars'.     It  was  leased 
in  1600  to  one  Evans,  who  first  set  up  the  Chapel  Boys.     In 
August,  1608,  the  Burbages  and  associates  bought  the  remaining 
lease  of  Evans,  the  master  of  the  Chapel,  and  near  the  end  of 
1609,  placed  men  players  in  their  room."     Id.,  I,  c. 


THE  THEATERS  IN  LONDON.          99 

a  hanging  roof;  the  spectators  stood  on  the  ground  in 
front,  or  at  the  sides,  or  were  accommodated  in  boxes, 
or  around  the  inner  circumference  of  the  edifice,  or  in 
galleries  at  a  greater  elevation.  Our  ancient  stage  was 
unfurnished* with  movable  scenery;  and  tables,  chairs, 
a  few  boards  for  a  battlemented  wall,  or  a  rude  struc- 
ture for  a  tomb  or  an  altar,  seemed  to  have  been 
nearly  all  the  properties  it  possessed."  "At  this 
period  of  our  stage  history  (i594)>  tne  performances 
usually  began  at  three  in  the  afternoon".  Collier 
further  says,  I,  n:  "The  Globe  was  a  round  wooden 
building  open  to  the  sky,  while  the  stage  was  pro- 
tected from  the  weather  by  an  overhanging  roof  or 
thatch.  The  number  of  persons  it  would  contain,  we 
have  no  means  of  ascertaining,  but  it  certainly  was  of 
larger  dimensions  than  the  Rose  theater,  the  Hope,  or 
the  Swan,  three  other  edifices  of  the  same  kind,  and 
used  for  the  same  purpose  in  the  immediate  vicinity. 
The  Blackfriars  was  a  private  theater,  as  it  was  called, 
entirely  covered  in,  and  of  smaller  size."  Fleay, 
Hist.,  says,  p.  152:  "Blackfriars  was  a  private  theater, 
built  after  1596.  The  private  theaters  were  in  en- 
closed buildings,  had  pits  with  seats  instead  of  open 
yards.  The  performances  were  by  candle  light  and 
part  of  the  audience  sat  on  the  stage  smoking.  They 
(these  private  theaters)  grew  out  of  the  performances  of 
marriages,  etc.,  of  the  gentry,  and  the  Inns  of  Court 
Revels,  just  as  the  public  theaters  grew  out  of  the  inn- 
yard  play-houses  and  the  open  air  scaffolds  in  the  market 
place."  On  page  10,  Mr.  Fleay  goes  back  to  the  ori- 
gin of  play  houses  and  playing  companies:  "At  the 
accession  of  Elizabeth  (1558),  the  stages,  that  is  to 


IOO  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

say,  the  inn-yards,  occupied  as  play  places,  were  used 
by  the  men  players  under  the  patronage  of  the  princi- 
ple noblemen  and  gentry  connected  with  the  Court. 
.  .  .  Had  it  not  been  for  the  Queen's  liking  of  the 
drama,  and  for  the  courtiers  imitating  of  her  taste 
shown  by  the  adoption  of  dramatic  entertainments  at 
christenings,  marriages,  etc.,  it  would  have  been  long 
before  the  stage  would  have  emerged  from  its  earlier 
condition  as  a  mere  vehicle  for  the  production  of  mys- 
teries, miracles,  and  moral  interludes.  .  .  .  The 
point  which  I  endeavor  to  insist  on  as  a  necessary 
condition  to  the  understanding  of  all  subsequent  stage 
history,  is  the  absolute  subordination  of  public  per- 
formances to  court  representations."  He  says  that 
the  keeping  up  the  play  houses  in  inn-yards  was  in 
effect  allowing  of  rehearsals  to  be  performed  to  and  at 
the  cost  of  the  people,  so  saving  court  expenses;  and 
that  out  of  the  plays  exhibited  in  public  every  year, 
some  half  dozen  of  the  best  were  selected  for  repre- 
sentation before  the  Queen  at  Christmas  and  Shrove- 
tide. These  play-places  were  suppressed  by  the  city 
authorities,  and  this  led  to  the  establishment  of  player 
companies  directly  under  the  Queen's  patronage. 
"Scarcely  any  advance  was  made  in  the  literary  quality 
of  these  plays  or  interludes  between  1560  and  1587. 
Dumb-shows  and  Inductions*  (an  introductory  scene, 
preface,  prologue  to  a  play.  Webster)  became  popular 
toward  the  close  of  the  period"  ;  that  is,  about  the  time 

*  The  play  of  the  "Taming  of  a  Shrew"  is  prefaced  by  an 
"Induction",  consisting  of  two  short  farcical  scenes;  the  foolery 
with  a  drunken  tinker  was  just  the  sort  of  thing  to  please  a 
public  theater  audience. 


THE  THEATERS  IN  LONDON.          IOI 

that  young  Shaksper  came  to  London.  In  1576  or 
1577,  the  first  two  theaters,  (the  Theater,  and  the 
Curtain)  were  built.  Mr.  Fleay  gives  a  list  of  the 
Interludes  and  plays  that  were  represented  at  Court  up 
to  1587,  and  they  are  all  of  the  simplest  description. 
He  says,  "Up  to  1592,  the  court  performances,  (from 
1586)  had  been  Interludes,  plays  by  the  Paul's  boys, 
and  Masks. ' '  An  example  of  the  last  was  ' '  The 
Misfortunes  of  Arthur,"  by  the  gentlemen  of  Gray's 
Inn. 

Collier  makes  Shaksper  a  player  at  the  Blackfriars, 
and  a  part  owner  of  that  theater;  but  Fleay,  in  his 
Life,  55,  says:  "There  is  no  proof  that  William  Shak- 
spere  ever  acted  at  Blackfriars" — which  is  equivalent 
to  saying  that  he  never  acted  in  a  private  theater.  In 
the  same  book,  he  says  also,  (65)  that  the  averment 
that  Shakspere  was  part  owner  of  the  Blackfriars 
rests  on  forged  documents  (64),  that  the  King's  men 
took  possession  of  this  theater  for  their  own  purposes 
in  1614,  or  1615,  "but  there  is  not  a  trace  of  them 
until  then  in  connection  with  this  private  theater, 
except  the  ex  parte  statement  of  C.  Burbage,  made 
for  a  special  purpose,  in  a  plea  which  is  studiously 
ambiguous." 

In  the  Hist.  Lond.  Stage,  Mr.  Fleay  has  somewhat 
modified  this  last  statement.  On  page  153,  he  says: 
"In  August,  1608,  the  Burbages  bought  the  then  re- 
maining lease  of  Blackfriars,  and  near  the  end  of  1609, 
(on  p.  201,  Dec.  1609),  placed  men  players,  Heminge, 
Condell,  Shakspere,  &c.,  in  their  rooms."  Again, 
on  p.  190,  he  says:  "They  (the  King's  men)  con- 
tinued from  1 6 10  to  1642  to  use  both  the  Globe 


102  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKKSPKARE. 

and  the  Blackfriars.  The  year  1610  was  just  at  the 
end  of  Shaksper's  theatrical  career,  for  he  sold  his  in- 
terest and  retired  to  Stratford  at  that  time,  1610-11." 
There  is  no  testimony  in  Phillipps  or  Fleay  that  Shak- 
sper  ever  played  at  Blackfriars,  or  any  private  theater. 
His  Company  played  occasionally  at  Court,  about 
Christmas  time,  at  Whitehall,  arid  at  Greenwich;  also 
rarely  at  Somerset  House,  at  Pembroke  House,  at 
Grays  Inn,  being  officially  the  L,ord  Chamberlain's 
players,  or  the  King's  players;  but  at  these  perform- 
ances as  elsewhere,  there  was  no  movable  scenery  used 
and  the  plays  were  greatly  abbreviated.  Mr.  Fleay 
repeatedly  alludes  to  this  fact. 

The  covering  being  of  thatch  led  to  the  destruction 
of  the  Globe  theater,in  1613.  In  playing  All  is  True, 
"certain  chambers  being  shot  off,  some  of  the  stuff 
wherewith  some  of  them  was  stopped  (wadding)  did 
light  on  the  thatch,  and  kindled  inwardly  .  .  .  con- 
suming the  whole  house  to  the  ground". 

Symonds,  287,  says:  "Performances  began  at  3 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon  and  averaged  about  two 
hours  in  duration.  The  piece  of  the  day  was  gen- 
erally closed  with  an  address  to  the  sovereign ,  recited 
by  the  actors  on  their  knees.  Then  followed  a  kind  of 
farce,  technically  called  a  jig,  in  which  the  clown  per- 
formed the  solo.  Jigs  were  written  in  rhyme,  plenti- 
fully interspersed  with  gag,  and  extempore  action.* 
(Webster  defines  jig — obsolete — as  a  light,  humorous 
piece  of  writing — a  farce  in  verse).  Entrance  prices 

*  "Kemp's  jigge  was  one  of  those  diversions,  of  combined  sing- 
ing and  dancing,  of  which  several  were  written  and  performed 
by  him  and  Tarleton. ' '  Ing.  28. 


THE   THKATERS   IN    LONDON.  103 

varied  with  the  theater,  the  seat,  and  kind  of  exhibi- 
tion. For  the  most  ordinary  shows  three  pennies  were 
paid,  one  at  the  gate,  another  at  the  entry  of  the  scaf- 
fold, and  the  third  for  quiet  standing.  In  the  larger 
theaters,  there  was  a  place  called  the  two-penny  room, 
which  answers  to  our  gallery.  Private  boxes  were 
sold  at  a  higher  rate. ' ' 

'  'The  lowest  frequenters  of  the  public  theaters  con- 
temptuously alluded  to  as  'groundlings',  and  'stink- 
ards', stood  in  the  yard  (pit)  beneath  the  open  sky.  . 
.  .  Spectators  of  the  more  fashionable  sort  sat  on 
three-legged  stools  upon  the  stage;  they  took  their 
place  by  force  in  defiance  of  the  hootings  and  hisses  of 
the  groundlings  separated  from  them  by  the  barriers 
of  the  stage.  The  custom  was  a  great  annoyance  both 
to  the  actors  and  the  audience;  for  the  young  gallants 
showed  very  little  consideration  for  either.  They  ex- 
changed remarks,  and  chaffed  the  players,  peeled 
oranges,  and  threw  apples  into  the  yard,  puffed  to- 
bacco from  pipes  lighted  by  their  pages,  and  flirted 
with  the  women  in  the  neighboring  boxes." 

["Chaffed  the  players."  We  have  an  amusing  de- 
scription of  this  pastime  in  A  Midsummer- Night's 
Dream,  where  Theseus,  Hippolyta,  and  the  courtiers, 
sitting  on  the  stage  witnessing  the  play  given  by  Bot- 
tom and  his  company  "of  unlettered  rustics",  are  in- 
cessantly and  unmercifully  interrupting  and  ridiculing 
them.  The  Queen  exclaims:  "This  is  the  silliest  stuff 
e'er  I  heard."  In  comes  the  lion,  who  roars  as  gently 
as  a  sucking  dove.  "Well  roared,  lion,  well  run, 
Thisbe".  Pyramus  dies;  "With  the  help  of  a  surgeon 
he  might  yet  recover,  and  prove  an  ass";  and  so  on, 


104  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

audibly,  at  every  movement  of  the  players.  This  prac- 
tice of  chaffing  shows  the  contempt  of  the  better  class 
of  spectators  for  both  players  and  play,  and  we  are 
told  it  was  habitual,  also  that  the  private  theaters 
were  subjected  to  the  same  nuisance.  Fleay,  from  his 
point  of  view  that  Shakespeare  was  Shaksper,  and 
the  author  of  Hamlet,  considers  the  attack  on  Bottom 
and  his  "base  mechanicals"  as  a  satire  against  the 
Earl  of  Sussex's  men  (company)  ...  all  guess 
work;  but  from  my  point  of  view  that  Shakespeare 
was  not  Shaksper,  and  that  the  Shakespeare  plays  were 
not  written  for  the  public  theater,  or  with  any  thought 
of  their  being  played  therein,  it  is  likely  that  the 
scene  spoken  of  was  written  in  ridicule  of  all  public 
theater  players,  and  that  of  Shaksper' s  company  as 
much  as  any.] 

Mr.  Symonds  imagines  a  visit  to  the  Fortune,  289: 
"It  is  three  o'clock  upon  an  afternoon  of  summer. 
We  pass  through  the  great  door,  ascend  some  steps, 
and  let  ourselves  into  our  private  room  (box)  upon 
the  first  or  lower  tier.  We  find  ourselves  in  a  low 
square  building,  open  to  the  slanting  sunlight,  built  of 
shabby  wood,  not  unlike  a  circus;  smelling  of  saw- 
dust and  the  breath  of  people.  The  yard  before  is 
crowded  with  'six-penny  mechanics',  and  '  'prentices'  in 
greasy  leathern  jerkins,  servants,  boys  and  grooms, 
elbowing  each  other  for  bare  standing  room,  and  pass- 
ing coarse  jests  on  their  neighbors.  A  similar  crowd 
is  in  the  two-penny  room  above  our  heads,  except  that 
here  are  a  few  flaunting  girls.  Not  many  women  of 
respectability  are  visible,  although  two  or  three  have 
taken  a  side  box,  from  which  they  can  lean  forward  to 


THE  THEATERS  IN  LONDON.          105 

exchange  remarks  with  the  gallants  on  the  stage.  .  .  . 
The  first  act  begins.  There  is  nothing  but  the  rudest 
scenery.  A  battlemented  city-wall  behind  the  stage, 
with  a  placard  hung  out  upon  it  indicating  that  the 
scene  is  Rome.  As  the  play  proceeds,  the  figure  of  a 
town  makes  way  for  some  wooden  rocks  and  a  couple 
of  trees,  to  signify  the  Hyrcanian  forest.  A  damsel 
with  a  close- shaven  chin  wanders  alone  in  the  wood, 
lamenting  her  sad  case.  Suddenly  a  card-board  dragon 
is  thrust  from  the  sides  upon  the  stage,  and  she  takes 
flight.  The  first  act  closes  with  a  speech  from  an  old 
gentleman  arrayed  in  antique  robes.  He  is  the  Chorus, 
and  it  is  his  business  to  explain  what  has  happened  to 
the  damsel,  and  how  in  the  next  act,  her  son,  a 
sprightly  youth  of  eighteen,  will  conquer  the  dragon. 
During  the  course  of  the  play,  music  is  made  for  the 
recreation  of  the  audience,  with  songs  and  ditties. 
The  show  concludes  with  a  prayer  for  the  Queen's 
Majesty,  uttered  by  the  actors  on  their  knees." 

Again:  "It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realize  the  simplic- 
ity with  which  the  stage  was  mounted  in  the  London 
theaters.  Scenery  may  be  said  to  have  been  wholly 
absent."  P.  297.  "Actresses  were  never  seen  upon 
the  stage.  Beardless  youths  'boyed'  the  greatness  of 
Cleopatra  and  Lady  Macbeth,  hobbledehoys  'squeaked' 
out  the  pathos  of  Desdemona  and  Juliet's  passion". 
P.  60.  "How  could  such  characters  (the  female  char- 
acters of  the  plays  of  Fletcher,  Marston,  Dekker  and 
others) — not  to  speak  of  Imogen  or  Cleopatra,  Con- 
stance or  Katharine — have  been  represented  on  the 
English  stage?  Here,  indeed,  is  a  mystery.  How 
could  Shakespeare  have  committed  Desdemona  to  a 


io6 


SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 


boy?"     The  simple  answer  is,  Shakespeare  did  not 
doit. 


mm- 

t)lrn<fr|i<WiftT»)iT1' 


Dowden  says,  50:     "A  nide  sketch  of  the  interior  of 
the  Swan  Theater,  I^ondon,  as  it  was  about  the  year 


THE  THEATERS  IN  LONDON.       107 

1596,  was  not  long  since  brought  to  light  in  the  Uni- 
versity Library,  Utrecht.  It  is  from  the  hand  of  a 
learned  Dutchman,  Johannes  De  Witt,  who  visited 
England  toward  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth. 
No  other  drawing  of  the  interior  of  an  Elizabethan 
theater  is  known  to  exist." 

"The  stage,  strongly  supported  on  timber  bulks,  is 
occupied  by  three  actors,  and  has  for  all  its  furniture 
a  bench.  Neither  curtains  nor  traverses  appear.  At 
the  back  of  the  stage,  which  is  open  to  the  weather,  is 
the  tiring  room,  and  above  this  rises  a  covered  balcony, 
occupied  by  spectators,  but  available  at  need  for  the 
actors.  The  trumpeter  is  seen  at  the  door  of  a  covered 
chamber  near  the  gallery  roof. ' '  Id.  50. 

Chamber's  Enc.,  "'Theatre",  says  of  this  drawing: 
"The  only  existing  contemporary  drawing  of  the 
.Elizabethan  stage  is  here  reproduced  from  Dr.  Gae- 
dertz'  book  on  the  'Old  English  Stage'.  It  represents 
the  Swan  Theater  in  1596.  The  drawing  was  made 
by  one  John  De  Witt,  who  visited  London  in  1596, 
and  whose  manuscript  diary  was  discovered  by  Dr. 
Gaedertz  in  the  Royal  Library  at  Berlin.  As  a  pic- 
ture of  the  stage  in  the  time  of  Shakespeare  it  is  of 
infinite  value." 

The  authors  I  have  quoted  assert  that  the  stage 
was  protected  from  the  weather  by  a  roof,  but  no  one 
of  them  gives  an  authority  for  the  fact.  De  Witt's 
picture  shows  that  there  was  no  such  shelter  at  the 
Swan,  and  makes  it  probable  that  the  other  public 
theaters  were  constructed  after  the  same  fashion — and 
that  the  players,  as  well  as  the  crowd  in  the  pit,  stood 
exposed  to  the  weather.  Fleay,  Hist.,  147,  says  of  the 


108  SHAKSPKR   NOT  SHAKKSPKARK. 

Theater:  ''Being  a  public  theater  with  daylight  per- 
formances, (it)  was  open  to  the  sky  in  the  centre"; 
148:  "The  Curtain  was  a  similar  building  to  the 
Theater;  and  the  Rose  and  Swan  were  similar  to 
same".  Therefore,  the  fact  must  be  that  all  these 
theaters  were  as  in  De  Witt's  cut  of  the  Swan,  the 
stage  as  well  as  the  pit  open  to  the  sky.*  This  cut 
enables  us  to  understand  Mr.  Symonds  imaginary  pic- 
ture of  the  Fortune,  before  given.  The  lowest  floor 
at  the  two  sides  of  the  stage  is  divided  into  rooms,  or 
boxes,  few  in  number;  the  second  floor  is  the  two- 
penny gallery,  occupied  by  persons  of  the  same  order 
as  those  in  the  pit.  Plainly,  nine-tenths  of  the  audi- 
ence consisted  of  what  Mr.  Symonds  says  were  con- 
temptuously called  groundlings  or  stinkards. 

Neither  the  Theater,  nor  the  Curtain,  was  used 
exclusively  for  dramatic  entertainments.  Both  were 
frequently  engaged  for  matches  and  exercises  in  the 
art  of  fencing  .  .  .  and  not  only  fencers,  but 
tumblers  and  such  like  sometimes  exhibited  at  these 
theaters".  H.-P.,  273. 

William  Shaksper,  as  a  player,  first  belonged  to 
Lord  Strange' s  Company;  soon  after  the  death  of 
Lord  Strange,  Lord  Hunsdon  became  its  patron,  and 
when  the  second  Lord  Hunsdon  became  the  Chamber- 
lain, 1593,  it  was  called  ''the  Chamberlain  Company"; 
after  1603,  and  the  accession  of  James,  it  became  "The 
King's  Company",  In  1593,  the  Company  opened  in 


*  Drake,  chapter  VII,  says  of  the  Globe  Theater:  "It  was  con- 
structed of  wood,  and  only  partly  thatched,  its  centre  being  open 
to  the  weather." 


THKATKRS   IN   LONDON.  1 09 

the  old  "Theater".  Fleay,  (25)  says  that  before  the 
establishment  of  the  Chamberlain's  Company,  Shak- 
sper  had  often  been  obliged  to  travel,  and  to  act 
about  town  in  inn-yards.  According  to  Halliwell- 
Phillips,  I,  109,  "Shakespeare's"  first  plays  up  to 
1 594,  were  all  written  for  Henslowe,  and  were  acted 
tinder  the  sanction  of  that  manager,  by  the  various 
companies  performing  from  1592  to  1594  at  the  "Rose 
Theater  and  Newiugton-Butts".  Fleay  states  posi- 
tively that  player  Shaksper  had  no  connection  with 
the  Rose.  The  Rose  was  not  opened  until  1592,  and 
remained  empty  much  of  the  ensuing  t\velve  months. 
Mr.  Fleay  says  (22):  "The  Chamberlain's  players, 
however,  did  not  act  there,  but  under  Shakespeare 
(Shaksper)  and  Burbage,  re-opened  the  old  Theater 
while  Alleyn  left  them  and  acted  with  the  Admirals  at 
the  Rose."  In  1597,  the  old  Theater  having  become 
ruinous,  the  Chamberlain's  Company  removed  to  the 
Curtain".  Id.  31. 

In  January,  1599,  Burbage,  the  leader  of  this  com- 
pany erected  the  Globe  theater,  and  to  this  Shaksper 
belonged  until  he  sold  out  and  retired  to  Stratford  in 
1610-11.  "There  is  no  proof  that  Shaksper  ever 
acted  at  Blackfriars;*  there  is  strong  presumption  to 

*  On  p.  233,  Fleay,  Hist.,  quotes  the  Athenaeum  as  follows: 
"It  is  now  for  the  first  time  ascertained  that  the  King's  Com- 
pany were  performing  at  the  Blackfriars  Theater  as  early  as 
1608,  and  for  the  interesting  fact  that  Shakespere  was  then  one 
of  their  leading  actors,  we  have  the  unquestioned  authority  of 
the  Burbages  in  the  well-known  Lord  Chamberlain's  records 
of  1635."  On  this  Fleay  remarks  in  foot-note:  "There  is  not 
a  particle  of  evidence  for  this  rash  statement,  which  is  in  direct 
contradiction  with  the  records  of  1635  therein  referred  to." 


110  SHAKSPKR    NOT   SHAKESPEARK. 

the  contrary  as  to  his  supposed  shares  iu  that  theater; 
it  was  the  private  inheritance  of  the  Burbages,  and 
that  the  King's  men  had  shares  in  it  at  this  time 
rests  on  the  evidence  of  forged  documents  and  mis- 
chievously fertile  imaginations."  Fleay,  Life,  65. 

In  1601,  "a  strolling  detachment"  of  the  Chamber- 
lain's Company  (Shaksper  being  one  of  the  strollers; 
Fleay,  I/ife,  43)  wandered  through  England,  and  even 
into  Scotland.  Much  of  the  playing  of  Shaksper 's 
associates  and  company  was  done  in  inn-yards  in  Lyn- 
don and  other  towns,  and  at  fairs  and  markets  as 
they  tramped.  In  L,ondon,  there  were  three  or  four 
such  yards  commonly  used  for  that  purpose,  one  of 
which  was  at  the  Red  Bull  Inn.  In  the  inn-yards, 
the  performances  were  "upon  a  temporary  platform  or 
stage  in  the  middle  of  the  open  court  yard,  to  which 
the  galleries  all  around  the  court  formed  boxes  for  the 
chief  spectators,  while  the  poorest  part  of  the  audience 
stood  in  the  court  on  all  sides  of  the  central  stage. ' ' 
Enc.  Brit.,  XXIII,  224.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  the 
performance  of  a  Shakespeare  play,  as  written,  in  an 
inn-yard,  must  have  been  an  impossibility;  a  naked 
extemporized  stage,  open  to  the  weather  overhead, 
everything  in  full  view  of  the  audience,  the  pit  com- 
pletely surrounding  the  stage,  and  no  scenery  or  pri- 
vacy. 

"To  lyondon  fled  all  the  adventurers,  vagabonds  and 
paupers  of  the  realm.  They  gathered  around  the 
play-houses.  Here  the  ruffians,  thieves,  vagabonds, 
the  apprentices,  the  pimps  and  prostitutes  assembled — 
a  dirty,  stormy,  quarrelsome  multitude."  Donnelly. 

"Beyond  doubt,"  says  Wendell,  41,  " the  Elizabethan 


THE;  THEATHRS  IN  LONDON.  in 

theater  of  1587  was  not  a  socially  respectable  place  and 
Elizabethan  theatrical  people  were  very  low  company. ' ' 
That  this  was  especially  the  case  with  the  two  public 
theaters,  the  ' 'Theater"  and  the  ' 'Curtain",  the  fol- 
lowing extracts  from  Phillipps  will  show:  "The  Thea- 
ter appears  to  have  been  a  very  favorite  place  of  amuse- 
ment, especially  with  the  more  unruly  section  of  the 
populace."  I,  354.  "It  is  clear  from  these  testi- 
monies that  the  'Theater'  attracted  a  large  number  of 
persons  of  questionable  character  to  the  locality." 
I,  358.  In  1597,  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London  charac- 
terized the  theaters  of  the  suburbs  (the  Theater 
and  Curtain)  as  ordinary  places  for  vagrant  persons, 
masterless  men,  thieves,  horse-stealers,  whoremongers, 
cozeners,  cony-catchers  (i.  e.,  sharpers),  contrivers  of 
treason,  and  other  idle  and  dangerous  persons  to 
meet  together."  W.,  57.  "The  crowds  of  disorderly 
people  frequenting  the  Theater  are  thus  alluded  to' ' , 
etc.  H.-P.,  I,  355.  Another  allusion  to  the  throngs 
of  the  lower  orders  attracted  by  the  entertainments  at 
the  Theater  occurs  in  a  letter  from  the  Lord  Mayor  to 
the  Privy  Council,  i3th  December,  1595:  "Among 
other  inconveniences  it  is  not  the  least  that  the  refuse 
sort  of  evil  disposed  and  ungodly  people  about  this 
city  have  opportunity  hereby  to  assemble  together  and 
to  make  their  matches  for  all  their  lewd  and  ungodly 
practices,  being  also  the  ordinary,  places  for  all  master- 
less  men  and  vagabond  persons  that  haunt  the  high- 
ways to  meet  together."  I,  355. 

A  letter  from  the  Lord  Mayor  to  the  Council  of  April 
12,  1580,  says :  "I  have  thought  it  my  duty  to  inform 
your  Lordship  that  the  players  of  plays  which  are 


112  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

used  at  the  'Theater'  and  other  such  places,  and 
tumblers,  and  such  like,  are  a  very  superfluous  sort  of 
men,"  etc.  I,  355.  On  193,  Mr.  Phillipps  says  that 
players  were  regarded  in  the  last  3rears  of  the  sixteenth 
century  in  about  the  same  light  with  jugglers  and 
buffoons".  "The  puritanical  writers  of  the  time  of 
Shakespeare  were  indignant  at  the  erection  of  regular 
theatrical  establishments,  and  the  Theater  and  the 
Curtain  were  the  special  objects  of  their  invective. 
They  are  continually  named  together  as  sinks  of  all 
wickedness  and  abomination,"  thus:  "I  am  persuaded 
that  Satan  hath  not  a  more  speedy  way  and  fitter 
school  to  work  and  teach  his  desires  to  bring  men  and 
women  into  his  share  of  concupiscence  and  wicked 
whoredom  than  these  places  and  plays  and  theaters". 
I,  365.  "Rankins,  in  his  Mirrour  for  Monsters,  1587, 
observes  that  the  Theater  and  Curtain  may  aptly  be 
termed  for  their  abomination,  'the  Chapel  adulteri- 
num'  ".  I,  370.  "The  independent  testimony  of  the 
author  of  the  Newes  from  the  North,  1579,  is  to  a 
similar  effect:  'I  have  partly  showed  you  what  leave 
and  liberty  the  common  people,  namely  youth,  hath 
to  follow  their  own  lust  and  desire  in  all  wantonness 
and  dissolution  of  life;  for  further  proof  whereof  I  call 
to  witness  the  Theaters,  Curtains'  ",  etc.  H.-P.,  id. 

"In  the  play-houses  of  London",  observes  Gosson, 
in  his  Player  Confuted,  "it  is  the  fashion  of  youths 
to  go  first  into  the  yard  (the  pit)  and  to  carry  their  eye 
through  every  gallery;  then,  like  unto  ravens,  where 
they  spy  the  carrion  thither  they  fly.  ...  he 
taketh  himself  for  a  jolly  fellow,  that  is  noted  of 


THE  THEATERS  IN  LONDON.         113 

most  to  be  busiest  with  women  in  all  such  places". 
H.-P.,  id. 

Symonds  says:  "The  theaters  of  London  were  the 
resort  of  profligate  and  noisy  persons."  On  p.  277: 
"Three  theaters  at  least  were  then  (1576)  established 
in  the  purlieus  of  the  city.  The  first  of  these  was 
styled  'The  Theater' ;  the  second  was  called  the  Cur- 
tain. Both  were  in  Shoreditch,  and  both  soon  ob- 
tained a  bad  reputation  for  brawling,  low  company, 
and  disreputable  entertainments. ' ' 

On  p.  306:  "In  the  origin  of  the  stage,  theaters 
were  closely  connected  with  houses  of  public  enter- 
tainment, inns,  hostelries,  places  of  debauch  and 
brothels.  .  .  .  They  formed  a  nucleus  for  what 
was  vile,  adventurous,  and  hazardous,  in  the  floating 
population.  .  .  .  The  actual  habits  of  an  audi- 
ence in  a  London  theater  may  be  imagined  from  more 
or  less  graphic  accounts  given  by  contemporary  satirists 
as  thus:  'In  our  assemblies  at  plays  in  London,  you 
shall  see  such  heaving  and  shoving,  such  itching  and 
shouldering  to  sit  by  women  .  .  .  such  playing 
at  foot-saunt  without  cards;  such  ticking,  such  toying, 
such  smiling,  such  winking,  and  such  manning  them 
home  when  the  sports  are  ended,'  "  etc.,  etc. 

Mr.  Symonds,  307,  quotes  Stubbes  in  his  Anatomy 
of  Abuses:  "But  mark  the  flocking  and  running  to 
Theaters  and  Curtains,  daily  and  hourly,  night  and 
day,  time  and  tide,  to  see  Plays  and  Interludes,  where 
such  wanton  gestures,  such  bawdy  speeches,  such 
laughing  and  fleering,  such  kissing  and  bussing,  such 
clipping  and  culling,  such  winking  and  glancing  of 
wanton  eyes  and  the  like  is  used  as  is  wonderful  to 


114  SHAKSPER   NOT 

behold.  Then,  these  goodly  pageants  being  ended, 
every  male  sorts  out  his  mate,"  etc.,  etc.  "Many 
players,  if  reports  are  true,  are  common  panders." 
On  p.  309:  "Women  of  loose  life  frequented  them." 
"In  the  Actor's  Remonstrance,  1643,  this  abuse  of  the 
player's  vocation  is  ingenuously  admitted:  'We  have 
left  off  for  our  part  .  .  .  that  ancient  custom  which 
formerly*  rendered  men  of  our  quality  infamous:  namely, 
the  inveigling  of  young  gentlemen,  merchants,  factors 
and  apprentices  to  spend  their  master's  estates  upon  us 
and  our  harlots  in  taverns.'  "  "No  woman  might  at- 
tend a  play  house  unless  masked."  Knc.  Brit., 
"Drama".  "Girls  of  good  character  scarce  dared  to 
enter  a  play  house.  From  ballads  of  the  period  we 
learn  what  was  the  peril  to  their  reputations."  Sy- 
monds.  On  p.  315,  the  same  writer  says :  "In  slums  and 
suburbs,  purlieus  and  base  quarters  of  the  town  stood 
these  wooden  sheds  which  have  echoed  to  the  verses 
of  the  greatest  poet  of  the  modern  world."  I  deny 
that  fact.  The  Shaksper  commentators  all  assume 
that  the  Shakespeare  plays  were  acted  in  these  sheds, 
but  history  is  silent  on  the  matter,  and  the  possibili- 
ties are  the  other  way. 

I  have  summoned  these  witnesses  to  show  what  sort 
of  places  the  public  theaters  were  to  which  William 
Shaksper  belonged  during  the  whole  of  his  life  in  Lon- 
don (for  the  Globe  was  just  such  a  public  theater  as  the 
Curtain) ;  and  the  kind  of  people  he  has  been  supposed 

*  "Formerly."  It  is  highly  probable  that  this  custom  pre- 
vailed while  Shaksper  was  connected  with  the  public  theaters. 
Jonson,  in  his  Poetaster,  to  be  quoted  presently,  intimates  as 
much. 


THKATERS   IN   LONDON.  115 

to  have  written  the  plays  for;  and  a  pretty  showing  it 
is!  I  doubt  if  in  all  London  to-day,  there  is  a  place 
of  public  entertainment  more  debased  than  were  the 
public  theaters  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth;  the  pit 
crowded  with  rowdies,  ruffians  and  "stinkards";  the 
boxes  and  galleries  occupied  by  prostitutes  and  their 
paramours,  (a  decent  girl  could  not  set  foot  in  the 
theater  without  peril  to  her  reputation).  What  sort 
of  men  therefore  must  the  players  have  been,  who, 
year  in  and  year  out,  purveyed  to  such  audiences? 
"Tell  me  the  company  you  keep,  and  I  will  tell  you 
\vhat  you  are",  is  a  proverb  in  one  form  or  other  in 
every  civilized  language  on  earth.  Evidently  these 
players  were  vile,  debauched,  such  as  no  reputable 
man  wrould  ask  to  his  house,  or  be  known  to  have  ac- 
quaintance with. 

It  could  not  have  been  possible  that  any  man  of 
cultivation  between  1588  and  1610  would  go  to  that 
place  of  abomination — the  public  theater — to  hear  a 
play  of  any  sort  by  Burbage,  and  Shaksper,  and 
Heminge,  and  Condell.*  As  to  the  Shakespeare  plays, 

*  The  writer  of  a  paper  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  March,  1898, 
in  the  character  of  a  Dutch  traveler  in  London,  1599,  inditing 
a  letter  to  a  countryman,  imagines  a  First  Performance  of  a 
Shakespeare  play,  to- wit,  Henry  V,  at  the  Curtain  Theater.  He 
describes  his  visit  to  that  place  of  entertainment — says  that  it  is 
a  disreputable  place,  and  that  the  rabble  fill  the  pit.  "An 
empty  box  near  the  stage  presently  was  entered  by  three  masked 
ladies  attended;  whose  elaborate  head  gear  and  extensive  ruffs 
betray  high  degree.  One  of  them  wore  at  her  girdle  a  gorgeous 
pendant  of  diamonds.  At  a  compliment"  (in  the  chorus  to  fifth 
act)  "to  the  'gracious  Empress',  the  chief  of  the  masked  ladies 
attracted  notice;  her  mask  suddenly  dropped  and  revealed  a 
damsel  of  sixty-six,  Elizabeth  of  England".  A  precious  place, 


Il6  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

so  great  an  authority  as  Dr.  Ingleby  declares  that  we 
are  but  even  now  "slowly  rounding  fo  a  just  estimate 
of  Shakespeare's  works' ' .  It  is  not  to  be  believed  that 
in  the  period  spoken  of  these  works  were  appreciated 
or  understood,  or  that  they  were  ever  performed  at 
length,  or  except  in  a  very  much  abbreviated  form,  at 
a  public  theater. 

''During  the  absence  of  the  strolling  detachment 
(Shaksper  being  one  of  the  strollers)  Jonson's  Poet- 
aster was  produced,  containing  a  vigorous  attack  on 
the  Globe  Company."  Fleay,  43.  From  this  I  give 
the  following: 

"What's  he  that  stalks  by  thee,  boy?" 

"'Tis  a  player,  sir." 

"A  player!  Call  the  lousy  rascal  hither.  Do  you 
hear,  you  player,  rogue,  stalker,  come  back  here. 
You  are  proud,  you  rascal,  are  you  proud,  ha  ?  You 
grow  rich,  do  you,  and  purchase,  you  two-penny  tear- 
mouth.  Come,  we  must  have  you  turn  fiddler  again, 
slave,  get  a  bass  viol  at  your  back,  and  march  in  a 
tawny  coat  with  one  sleeve  to  Goosefair!  Dost  thou 
not  know  that  Pantalabus  (Marston  the  playwright) 
there;  he  is  a  gentleman  you  slave.  Rascal,  to  him, 
cherish  his  muse,  go!  He  shall  write  for  thee,  slave! 
If  he  pen  for  thee  once,  thou  shalt  not  need  to  travel 
with  thy  pumps  full  of  gravel  any  more,  after  a  blind 
jade  and  a  hamper,  and  stalk  upon  boards  and  barrel 
heads  to  an  old  cracked  trumpet." 

"And  what  new  matters  have  you  now  afoot,  sir- 
rah?" 

truly,  for  a  Queen  to  be  caught  in,  even  in  the  imagination  of  a 
romancer. 


THIC  THEATERS  IN  LONDON.  117 

"We  have  as  much  ribaldry  in  our  plays  as  can  be, 
as  you  would  wish,  captain;  all  the  sinners  in  the 
suburbs  come  and  applaud  our  action  daily." 

"Well,  go  thy  ways;  my  Poetaster  shall  make  thee 
a  play,  and  thou  shalt  be  a  man  of  good  parts  in 
it.  ... 

"Let's  have  good  cheer  to-morrow  night  at  supper, 
stalker,  and  then  we'll  talk.  And  do  not  bring  your 
eating  player  with  you  there;  I  cannot  away  with  him; 
he  will  eat  a  leg  of  mutton  while  I  am  in  my  porridge, 
the  lean  Poluphagus;  nor  the  villainous  out-of-tune 
fiddler,  ^nobarbus,  bring  not  him.  Do  not  bring 
your  ^sop,  your  politician;  the  slave  smells  ranker 
than  some  sixteen  dunghills.  Marry,  you  may  bring 
Frisker,  my  zany;  he's  a  good  skipping  swaggerer; 
and  your  fat  fool  there,  my  mango,  bring  him  too;  but 
let  him  not  roar  out  his  barren  bold  jests  with  a  tor- 
menting laughter,  between  drunk  and  dry. 

"I  have  stood  up  and  defended  you,  I,  to  gentlemen, 
when  you  have  been  said  to  prey  upon  puisnes  (youths) 
and  honest  citizens;  or  when  they  have  called  you 
usurers  or  brokers,  or  said  you  were  able  to  help  to  a 
piece  of  flesh,  I  have  sworn  I  did  not  think  so,  nor 
that  you  were  the  common  retreats  for  punks  decayed 
in  their  practice,  I  cannot  believe  it  of  you".  (Inti- 
mates that  they  were  reported  to  be  panders,  and  aux- 
iliary to  the  brothels). 

A  pretty  vigorous  attack  truly!  What  manner  of 
men,  in  their  walk  and  conversation,  must  these  Globe 
players  have  been,  that  Jonson  should,  in  a  published 
play,  so  represent  them,  or  that  he  could  do  it  with 
impunity.  Which  of  these  players  satirized  was 


ii8  SHAKSPKR  NOT 

William  Shaksper,  I  cannot  say.  It  may  have  been 
"Frisker,  my  zany",  or  "my  mango",  but  the  words 
"usurers  and  brokers"  seem  sufficiently  to  specialize 
the  man.  Malone  said  of  this  attack:  "Shakspere  has 
marked  his  disregard  of  the  calumniator  of  his  fame 
by  not  leaving  him  any  memorial  in  his  Will;"  by 
which  it  appears  that  Malone  understood  Shaksper  to 
be  one  of  the  persons  attacked.  As  I  have  quoted 
from  Fleay  elsewhere:  "All  record  of  any  real  friend- 
ship between  them  (Jonson  and  Shaksper)  ended  in 
1603." 

I  have  described  at  some  length  the  public  theaters 
of  the  Shakespearean  age,  because,  by  the  way  the 
stage  and  the  players  are  usually  spoken  of,  one  would 
think  that  an  impression  prevails  that  these  play 
houses  were  something  not  much  inferior  to  the  best  me- 
tropolitan theaters  of  to-day;  and  that  the  players  were 
in  their  several  ways,  on  a  par  with  Garrick,  or  Kemble, 
Burton,  or  Jefferson,  or  Irving.  The  theaters  were 
sheds,  with  accompaniments  inexpressibly  filthy;  the 
audiences  were,  as  Hamlet  tells  us,  "groundlings,  who 
for  the  most  part,  are  capable  of  nothing  but  dumb- 
shows  and  noise' ' ;  the  players  were  low-lived  black- 
guards, ran-away  apprentices,  bankrupt  tradesmen  and 
mechanics.  Of  this  Globe  Company,  Burbage  had 
been  a  carpenter;  Heminge  a  grocer;  and  Shaksper  a 
butcher.  In  the  same  connection  Hamlet  says:  "O 
there  be  players  that  I  have  seen  play  .  .  .  that 
have  neither  the  accent  of  Christians,  Pagan,  nor 
man,  have  strutted  so  and  bellowed" — words  which 
applied  to  every  member  of  the  Globe  Company,  but 
especially  to  Burbage,  who  was  renowned  for  the 


THE  THEATERS  IN  LONDON.         1  19 

strength  of  his  lungs.  Drake,  ch.  VII,  expressly 
says  of  this  Company,  that  "the  exhibitions  were 
.  .  .  chiefly  calculated  for  the  lower  class  of  peo- 
ple"; and  that  the  upper  ranks  and  the  critics  gener- 
ally preferred  the  private  theaters,  which  were  smaller 
and  more  conveniently  fitted  up."  The  "lower  class 
of  people"  in  L,ondon  is,  and  always  was,  very  low 
down  indeed. 

This  is  the  point  I  make  and  insist  on,  that  the 
"upper  ranks",  and  cultivated  people,  did  not  go  to  the 
public  theater,  and  were  never  attracted  thither  by 
Shakespeare  plays.  In  the  Prologue  to  Henry  VIII, 
which  Fleay  says  was  evidently  written  for  the  audi- 
ence at  Blackfriars,  a  private  theater  —  a  shilling  audi- 
ence instead  of  a  two-penny  one  —  the  speaker  under- 
takes that  the  spectators  will  get  their  shilling's  worth 

in  the  two  hours: 

"Only  they 

That  come  to  hear  a  merry,  bawdy  play, 
A  noise  of  targets,  and  to  see  a  fellow 
In  a  long  motley  coat,  guarded  with  yellow, 
Will  be  deceived;  for,  gentle  hearers,  know 
To  rank  our  chosen  truth  with  such  a  show 
As  fool  and  fight  is,  besides  forfeiting 
Our  own  brains  and  the  opinion  that  we  bring, 
leave  us  never  an  understanding  friend." 


That  is  tolerably  plain!  And  it  is  aimed  at  the 
audiences  of  the  public  theaters.  "If  we  were  to  pre- 
sent you  such  plays  as  you  may  see  at  the  Globe,  be- 
sides forfeiting  our  own  self-respect,  we  should  lose 
the  friendship  of  every  cultivated  and  decent  man  in 
this  town".  "A  merry,  bawdy  play".  If  one  wishes 
to  see  that  sort  of  play,  read  Jonson's  Bartholomew 


120  SHAKSPKR    NOT  SHAK£SPKAR£. 

Fair,  full  of  local  allusions,  satire,  and  personalities, 
horse-play,  vulgarity,  obscenity,  and  profanity.  It 
would  be  impossible  to  perform  this  play,  as  written, 
before  even  the  lowest  audiences  of  to-day,  but  we  are 
told  that  it  was  popular  when  it  appeared,  time  of 
James  I  (1611).  Doubtless,  so  much  of  it  as  was 
played  at  the  Globe,  pleased  every  class  of  frequent- 
ers, from  the  gallants  on  the  stage  to  the  groundlings 
in  the  pit,  and  the  prostitutes  in  the  galleries. 

Henslowe,  in  all  the  years  during  which  Shaksper 
was  in  lyondon,  ran  one  or  more  theaters,  especially 
the  Rose  and  the  Fortune,  and  he  kept  a  diary  which 
has  been  preserved,  showing  what  plays  were  per- 
formed at  his  theaters,  what  he  paid  his  players,  and 
what  he  paid  authors  for  plays,  and  what  properties 
he  furnished  to  the  stage,  etc. ,  etc.  The  presumption 
is  that  Henslowe  was  a  typical  manager.  Fleay  says 
of  him,  117,  Hist.:  "Henslowe  was  an  illiterate  mon- 
eyed man,  by  trade  a  dyer",  (all  these  managers  and 
players  seem  to  have  been  originally  mechanics  or 
workmen)  "in  practice  a  pawnbroker.  .  .  .  He 
managed  to  keep  his  actors  in  subservience  and  his 
poets  in  constant  need  by  one  simple  method,  viz. :  by 
lending  them  money  and  never  allowing  their  debts  to 
be  fully  paid  off".  This  sounds  very  much  like  Rat- 
sie's  remarks  on  Shaksper;  also  the  remarks  from 
Crosse,  1603,  quoted  by  Phillipps  and  hereafter  given, 
believed  by  Phillipps  to  have  been  intended  for  Shak- 
sper; as  to  "these  copper-laced  gentlemen  (who)  grow 
rich,  purchase  lands  by  adulterous  plays,  and  not  a 
few  of  them  usurers  and  extortioners",  etc.  So  I 
think  we  may  accept  the  description  of  Henslowe  as 


THE  THEATERS  IN  LONDON.         12 1 

typical  of  the  managers  of  that  day;  and  surely  the 
criticisms  of  Hamlet  upon  the  players  and  the  audi- 
ences of  1 60 1  apply  to  the  companies  to  which  William 
Shaksper  belonged,  and  to  every  theater  with  which 
he  had  any  connection. 

There  is  no  existing  evidence  that  what  we  know  as 
the  Shakespeare  plays  were  ever  acted  in  any  shape  at 
a  private  London  theater  during  the  career  of  William 
Shaksper.  There  is  not  merely  a  lack  of  evidence 
that  they  were  ever  acted  at  length  at  a  public  theater, 
but  there  is  the  strongest  probability  that  they  were 
never  acted  at  all  in  such  a  theater,  save  in  a  greatly  ab- 
breviated and  altered  form,  interpolated  with  the  gag 
of  the  day,  or  in  dumb-show,  burlesque  and  travesty. 

"At  this  public  theater,  to  which  every  one  could 
obtain  access,  and  the  lowest  of  the  people  resorted, 
the  ordinary  performances  doubtless  were  of  the 
coarsest  description.  Yet  we  are  called  upon  to  be- 
lieve that  it  was  here  that  the  wonderful  works  which 
we  all  so  greatly  admire,  and  feel  that  we  can  only 
properly  appreciate  by  careful  private  study,  were  per- 
formed. Commentators  say,  'We  do  not  find  that  the 
plays  attributed  to  Shakespeare  were  ever  performed 
at  any  other  theater'.  They  do  not  say,  as  they 
might:  'We  do  not  find  that  they  were  ever  performed 
at  this'".  Smith,  77. 

Morgan  says,  261:  "From  what  knowledge  we 
possess  of  the  tone  and  quality  of  the  audiences  of 
those  days,  it  is  not  difficult  to  imagine  the  rudeness 
and  crudity  of  the  plays  actually  performed.  Be- 
fore such  an  audience  we  are  asked  to  believe  that 
Hamlet  and  Wolsey  delivered  their  soliloquies,  Antony 


122  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

his  impassioned  oratory,  and  Isabella  her  pious  strains; 
whilst  the  clown  and  the  pot-wrestlers  discoursed 
among  themselves  of  Athens  and  Troy;  and  Hecuba 
and  Althea;  of  Galen  and  Paracelsus;  of  'writ  of  de- 
tainer'; and  'fine  and  recovery'  ". 

In  Jonson's  Bartholomew  Fair,  we  get  an  inkling 
of  the  way  in  which  a  classical  story  was  brought  to 
the  comprehension  of  the  English  public.  The  pup- 
pet-player L,eatherhead  and  his  man  L,ittlewit  who,  the 
manager  says,  is  his  Burbage  (evidently  ridiculing  the 
King's  company)  are  showing  their  mystery  to  Cokes, 
"an  Esquire  of  Harrow",  the  play  being  The  Ancient 
Modern  History  of  Hero  and  Leander. 

Cokes.  "But  you  do  not  play  it  according  to  the  printed  book  ? 
I  have  read  that". 

Leath.     "By  no  means,  sir." 

Cokes.     "No.     How  then?" 

Leath.  "A  better  way,  sir;  that  is  too  learned  and  poetical  for 
our  audiences;  what  do  they  know  what  Hellespont  is?  Or 
what  Abdyos  is?  or  the  other,  Sestos  highi?" 

Cokes.     "Thou  art  in  the  right;  I  do  not  know  myself." 

Leath.  "No.  I  have  entreated  Master  Littlewit  to  take  a 
little  pains  to  reduce  it  to  a  more  familiar  strain  for  our 
people." 

Cokes.     "How,  I  pray  thee,  good  Master  Ivittlewit?" 

Litt.  "I  have  only  made  it  a  little  easy,  and  modern  for  the 
times,  that  is  all.  As  for  the  Hellespont,  I  imagine  our 
Thames  here;  and  the  I/eander  I  make  a  dyer's  son  about 
puddle-wharf;  and  Hero  a  wench  o'  the  Bank-side,  who  go- 
ing over  one  morning  to  old  Fish  street,  Leander  spies  her 
land  at  Trig-stairs,  and  falls  in  love  with  her. ' ' 

The  audience  at  one  penny  and  two-pence  per  head, 
are  gathered  in  and  the  play  begins: 


THEATERS  IN  LONDON.  123 

Leath.     "Gentles,  that  no  longer  your  expectations  may  wander, 
Behold  our  chief  actor,  amorous  Leander, 
With  a  great  deal  of  cloth,  lapp'd  about  him  like  a  scarf, 
For  he  yet  serves  his  father,  a  dyer  at  Puddle-wharf; 
Which  place  we'll  make  bold  with,  to  call  it  our  Abdyos, 
As  the  Bank-side  is  our  Sestos;  and  let  it  not  be  denied  us, 
Now  as  he  is  beating  to  make  the  dye  take  the  fuller, 
Who  chances  to  come  by  but  fair  Hero  in  a  sculler; 
And  seeing  Leander's  naked  leg  and  goodly  calf 
Casts  at  him  from  a  boat  a  sheep's  eye  and  a  half. 
Now  she  is  landed,  and  the  sculler  come  back 
By  and  by  you  shall  see  what  Leander  doth  lack." 

Leath.     "Leander  does  ask,  sir,  what  fairest  of  fairs, 
Was  the  fare  he  landed  but  now  at  Trig-stairs." 

"It  is  Hereof  the  Bank-side",     .     .     . 

"Leander  says  no  more,  but  as  fast  as  he  can 
Gets  all  his  best  clothes  on,  and  will  after  to  the  Swan." 

Hero.     "O  Leander,  Leander,  my  dear,  dear  Leander, 
I'll  forever  be  thy  goose,  so  thou'lt  be  my  gander." 

Lean.     "And  sweetest  of  geese,  before  I  go  to  bed 
I'll  swim  over  the  Thames     .     .     . 
.     .     .     my  goose,  my  dear  friend 
Let  thy  window  be  provided  of  a  candle  end." 

Hero.     Fear  not,  my  gander,  I  protest  I  should  handle 
My  matters  very  ill,  if  I  had  not  a  whole  candle." 

This  is  the  way  scenes  from  classically  founded 
plays  would  be  travestied  at  the  Globe  and  Curtain, 
and  we  can  see  that  the  fun  would  suit  the  audience. 

The  literary  critic  of  the  New  York  Tribune,  of 
3oth  of  July,  1897,  in  some  remarks  upon  C.  D. 
Warner's  "The  People  for  whom  Shakespeare  wrote", 
says:  "Mr.  Warner  disappoints  us  by  landing  his 
reader  at  a  station  far  short  of  complete  knowledge. 
He  has  nothing  to  say  about  the  pyschology  of  Eliza- 


124  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAK3SPKARE. 

bethan  audiences,  and  that,  after  all,  we  want  most  to 
hear  about.  How  far  did  contemporary  sympathy  for 
Shakespeare's  Plays  go?  .  .  .  These  historians 
(Mr.  Warner's  predecessors)  paint  the  audience  vividly 
enough,  but  they  make  no  attempt  to  divine  its  point 
of  view,  or  to  get  at  its  spiritual  side.  No  one  thinks 
of  discussing  the  probable  effect  upon  such  an  audi- 
ence of  the  purely  poetic  felicities  in  Shakespeare," 
etc.  The  quotation  I  have  given  above  from  Jonson, 
shows  clearly  the  point  of  view  of  the  spectators,  and 
is  as  applicable  to  the  unlettered  audiences  at  the 
public  theaters,  as  to  the  similar  audiences  at  Bar- 
tholomew Fair.  lyeatherhead  explains  that  the  story 
of  lyeander  and  Hero  "is  too  learned  for  our  audi- 
ences' ' .  '  'What  do  they  know  what  Hellespont  is,  or  • 
Abdyos,  or  Sestos!  and  Cokes,  the  country  squire, 
says,  'Thou  art  in  the  right;  I  do  not  know  myself.' ' 
So  L,ittlewit,  the  Burbage  of  this  play,  is  instructed  to 
"make  it  a  little  easy",  which,  as  we  have  seen,  he 
does. 

That  is  the  way,  in  travesty  or  burlesque,  and  the 
only  way,  that  scenes  from  classically  founded  plays 
could  have  been  brought  to  the  comprehension  of  the 
public  theater  audiences,  and  the  exposition  must 
have  delighted  the  groundlings.  Leander  and  Hero, 
or  Troilus  and  Cressida,  in  this  easy  and  modern  style, 
was  comprehensible  and  worth  the  penny  for  standing 
room. 

From  the  nature  of  the  public  theater,  an  open  shed, 
exposed  to  all  sorts  of  weather,  rain,  sleet,  snow,  fog — 
black  fog,  yellow  fog — thick  enough  to  be  cut  with  a 
knife,  the  performances  limited  to  the  last  hours  of  a 


THE    THEATERS    IN   LONDON.  125 

short  afternoon  (in  London,  in  the  winter  months,  the 
gas  is  lighted  by  half  past  three  and  four  o'clock — 
throughout  the  month  of  December  the  sun  sets  be- 
fore four  o'clock — and  many  a  day  is  so  dark,  and 
days  together,  that  in  all  shops  the  burners  are  lighted), 
nothing  more  than  a  few  special  scenes  of  a  Shake- 
speare play  could  have  been  presented,  had  there  been 
the  will  to  present  them.  The  audience  must  have  a 
farce,  a  song  and  dance — in  other  words,  one  of 
Kempe's  "jigges".  If  they  did  not  get  this,  they 
would  liave  pelted  the  players,  or  hooted  them  off  the 
stage.  Fleay  says,  p.  2,  that,  in  1586,  when  William 
Shaksper  joined  the  players,  "they  probably  acted 
mere  interludes,  not  regular  five-act  plays. ' '  He  also 
tells  us  that  up  to  1587,  dumb  shows  had  become  par- 
ticularly popular,  and  that  the  Court  performances  up 
to  1592  consisted  of  interludes  and  masks. 

What  one  of  these  theater  audiences  was  accustomed 
to,  that  it  would  have,  and  the  probability  is  that 
during  the  whole  of  William  Shaksper 's  career  as 
player  or  manager,  mere  interludes  or  special  scenes 
only  of  plays  were  presented — and  that  largely  in  pan- 
tomime. "Shakespeare"  makes  Hamlet  declare,  in 
1603,  that  the  groundlings,  by  which  we  are  to  under- 
stand the  bulk  of  the  audience  at  one  of  these  theaters, 
had  a  capacity  for  nothing  but  dumb -shows  and  noise. 
The  dumb -show,  the  principal  performance,  being 
ended,  there  followed  the  "jigs"  Symonds  tells  us  of, 
and  the  two  hours  entertainment  came  to  an  end. 
There  is  not  a  line  of  testimony  opposed  to  the  view 
that  one  of  the  principal  attractions  to  the  public  the- 
ater was  the  dumb-show. 


126  SHAKSPER   NOT    SHAKESPEARE. 

The  play  of  Titus  Andronicus,  put  on  the  stage  in 
1594,  and  exceedingly  popular,  we  are  told,  could  only 
have  been  played  in  pantomime, and  so  Knight  intimates. 
In  a  presentation  at  Court,  or  at  Grays  Inn,  the  au- 
dience sheltered  and  the  room  lighted,  doubtless  a 
Shakespeare  play  might  have  been  given  in  a  some- 
what more  extended  form.  No  evidence  has  come  to 
this  age  that  a  Shakespeare  play  was  ever  performed 
at  one  of  the  private  city  theaters.  Hamlet  occupies 
109  pages  in  Knight's  volumes,  enough  to  fill  six  hours 
at  a  New  York  theater;  Troilus  and  Cressida  97  pages; 
and  L,ear  would  fill  five  hours. 

Hamlet  ridicules  the  style  of  playing  in  vogue  thus: 

"Come,  give  us  a  taste  of  your  quality,  come,  a  passionate 

speech. ' ' 

i  Play.     '  'Whatfspeech,  my  lord?' ' 

Ham.     "I  heard  thee  speak  a  speech  once, — but  it  was  never 
acted;  or  if  it  was,  not  above  once;  for  the  play,  I  remember, 
pleased  not  the  million,  V  was  caviare  to  the  general,  but  it  was 
an  excellent  play,  well  digested  in  the  scenes;  set  down  with  as 
much  modesty  as  cunning.     .     .     .     One  speech  in  it  I  chiefly 
loved;  'twas  Eneas'  tale  to  Dido.      .      .      .      If  it  live  in  your 
memory  begin  at  this  line,   'The  rugged  Pyrrhus' : 
'  The  rugged  Pyrrhus — he,  whose  sable  arms, 
Black  as  his  purpose,  did  the  night  resemble 
While  he  lay  couched  in  the  ominous  horse, 
Hath  now  this  dread  and  black  complexion  smeared 
With  heraldry  more  dismal;  head  to  foot 
Now  is  he  total  gules;  horridly  tricked 
With  blood  of  fathers,  mothers,  daughters,  sons, 
Bak'd  and  impasted  with  the  parching  streets, 
That  lend  a  tyranous  and  damned  light 
To  their  lord's  murder;  roasted  in  wrath  and  fire. 
And  thus  o'er-sized  with  coagulate  gore, 


THE   THEATERS   IN   CONDON.  127 

With  eyes  like  carbuncles,  the  hellish  Pyrrhus 

Old  grandsire  Priam  seeks.'     So,  proceed  you." 

i  Play.     "But  who,  O  who,  had  seen  the  mobled  queen 

Run  barefoot  up  and  down,  threat' ning  the  flames 
With  bisson  rheum,  a  clout  upon  that  head 
Where  late  the  diadem  stood; 

When  she  saw  Pyrrhus  make  malicious  sport 
In  mincing  with  his  sword  her  husband's  limbs, 
The  instant  burst  of  clamor  that  she  made 
Would  have    made    milch    the  burning    eyes  of 

heaven 
And  passion  in  the  gods." 

Pleay  says,  228,  that  the  play  from  which  these 
lines  are  borrowed  belonged  to  the  Chapel  children, 
but  it  is  not  impossible  that  the  gifted  Burbage  had 
roared  off  this  stuff  at  the  Curtain  or  the  Globe. 

When  we  read  of  Richard  III  being  played  at  these 
public  theaters,  we  may  understand  that  a  dozen  heads 
were  lopped,  two  boys  were  smothered,  concluding 
with  a  desperate  battle,  represented  by  four  swords 
and  bucklers,  at  least  three  dead  men  left  on  the  field. 
This  gave  Burbage,  before  he  became  one  of  the  dead 
men,  the  opportunity  to  utter  his  historic  yell  for  a 
horse.  When  we  read  of  Henry  IV  being  played,  it 
means  that  fat  Jack  made  the  pit  merry,  and  that 
Dame  Quickly  and  Doll  Tearsheet  were  among  sym- 
pathizing friends.  ("Doll  Tearsheet  was  long  in  the 
public  mind."  Ingleby,  note  to  p.  90.)  They  got  off 
all  the  obscene  dialogue  that  is  not  spoken  now-a-days, 
and  extemporized  ten-fold  more  than  was  found  in  the 
text.  Mr.  Phillipps  expressly  tells  us,  I,  117,  that 
Shakspcr's  sole  aim  was  to  please  an  audience  most  of 


128  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKKSPEARE. 

whom,  be  it  remembered,  were  not  only  illiterate,  but  un- 
able to  either  read  or  write. ' ' 

Further,  when  we  are  told  that  Hamlet  or  Romeo, 
or  Lear,  or  Richard  III,  were  played  at  these  same 
theaters,  we  have  no  assurance  that  they  were  the 
Shakespeare  plays  of  those  names,  or  scenes  from 
them.  Many  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  were  based 
on  earlier  ones,  or  sketches  of  similar  name.  Fleay, 
in  a  dozen  instances,  shows  this.  He  speaks,  page  13, 
of  a  version  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  anterior  to  Shake- 
speare;* on  page  16,  of  the  re-fashioning  of  an  old 
play  of  Henry  VI;  on  page  23,  of  "the  old  Hamlet 
and  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew";  on  page  42,  of  "the 
old  Hamlet  of  Kyd";  of  playing,  in  1601,  All's  well 
that  Ends  Well,  "a  considerable  portion  of  which  is 
of  much  earlier  date";  of  a  version  of  Troilus  and 
Cressida;  page  53,  of  the  tragedy  of  King  lyear  being 
founded  on  an  old  comedy  of  that  name.  On  page  149, 
we  read  that  the  second  Quarto  of  Hamlet  was  pub- 
lished 1604,  ''newly  reprinted  and  enlarged  at  almost 
as  much  again  as  it  was".f 

In  February,  1600,  Sir  Charles  Percy  and  others  spoke 
to  the  players  to  have  the  play  of  the  deposing  and 
killing  of  King  Richard  II  to  be  played,  etc.  Au- 
gustine Phillipps,  Ingleby,  36.  In  the  note  Ingleby 

*  Craik  speaks  of  a  drama  founded  on  the  story  of  Romeo 
and  Juliet,  as  far  back  as  1562. 

f  An  allusion  by  Nash,  printed  in  1589,  as  a  reprint  of  1587, 
(when  William  Shaksper  was  but  23  years  old,  and  had  been 
out  of  Stratford  but  one  or  two  years,  or  else  had  just  come 
from  Stratford,  according  to  Fleay),  shows  that  Hamlet  was  al- 
ready familiar  with  the  stage. 


THK   THKATKRS   IN   LONDON.  129 

says:  '  'That  there  is  room  for  doubt  whether  the  play 
ordered  was  Shakespeare's  Richard  II,  or  another  on 
the  same  subject,  is  seen  by  Professor  Dowden's  com- 
ment 'that  this  was  Shakespeare's  play  is  very  un- 
likely.' " 

Gifford  tells  us  that  Malone  says:  '  'There  were  two 
preceding  dramas  (z.  e.  to  Henry  VI)  one  of  which 
was  called  the  Contention  of  York  and  Lancaster. 
Why  then,  might  not  this  be  the  drama  meant  (by 
Jonson's  skit)?  But  were  there  not  two  score  old 
plays  on  this  subject  on  the  stage?  Undoubtedly 
there  were."  Whence  it  appears  that  in  many  cases 
there  were  both  ancient  and  recent  plays  bearing  the 
same  name,  or  treating  of  the  same  subject;  and  that 
there  were  various  versions  of  a  given  play,  abridged 
or  altered  for  one  purpose  or  other.  Collier,  XI,  says: 
"Henslowe's  Diary  shows  that  the  I/)rd  Chamberlain's 
and  the  Lord  Admiral's  servants  had  joint  possession 
of  the  Newington  theater  from  3rd  June,  1594,  to  the 
1 5th  Nov.,  1595;  and  during  that  period,  various 
pieces  were  performed,  which  in  their  titles  resembled 
plays  which  unquestionably  came  from  Shakespeare's 
pen.  That  none  of  them  were  produced  by  our  great 
dramatist,  it  is  of  course  impossible  to  affirm;  but  the 
strong  probability  seems  to  be,  that  they  were  older 
dramas,  of  which  he  subsequently  more  or  less  availed 
himself.  Among  these  was  a  'Hamlet',  acted  on  nth 
June,  1594;  a  'Taming  of  a  Shrew',  acted  on  nth 
June,  1594;  an  ' Andronicus' ,  acted  on  12  June,  1594; 
a  'Venetian  Comedy',  acted  on  i2th  Aug.,  1594;  a 
'Caesar  and  Pompey',  acted  22nd  June,  1596.  Also, 
I,  VI:  "In  both  the  latter  cases  (Pericles  and  Troilus 


130  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

and  Cressida),  it  would  likewise  seem  that  there  were 
plays  by  older  or  rival  dramatists  upon  the  same  inci- 
dents." It  is  noticeable  that  in  no  instance  is  it  said 
that  a  play  "by  William  Shakespeare"  was  performed, 
or  a  '  'Shakespeare' '  play.  The  mere  title  of  the  play 
is  given,  as  Richard  III,  Hamlet,  etc.,  and  that  they 
were  in  all  cases,  or  in  any  case  where  there  were  two 
or  more  plays  bearing  the  same  name,  the  plays  we 
receive  as  Shakespeare's,  no  man  at  this  day  can  possi- 
bly know.  The  whole  matter  was  left  as  mysterious 
as  possible.  Hepworth  Dixon,  in  his  Personal  Me- 
moirs of  L,ord  Bacon,  speaking  of  the  incident  con- 
nected with  the  conspiracy  of  Essex  which  I  have 
above  recited,  says:  "L,ord  Monteagle  tells  him  (Au- 
gustine Phillipps)  that  they  want  to  have  played 
Shakespeare's  deposition  of  Richard  Second."  The 
naming  of  this  play  as  Shakespeare's  is  Mr.  Dixon's, 
for  Phillipps,  in  his  deposition,  did  not  mention  the 
word  Shakespeare.  He  said  that  they  wanted  "to 
have  the  play  of  the  deposing",  etc.  See  Ingleby,  36. 
Fleay,  Hist.,  on  pp.  121—125,  gives  a  complete  list  of 
the  Court  Performances  from  1594  to  1603.  Nowhere 
is  it  said  that  a  "Shakespeare"  play,  or  a  play  by 
"Shakespeare"  was  given.  On  pp.  169-178,  he  con- 
tinues the  list  to  1614.  He  copies  and  includes  in  this 
a  forged  list,  which  he  expressly  so  designates  (170), 
'  'but  undoubtedly  based  on  a  genuine  document  which 
was  used  by  Malone,  of  the  plays  at  Court,  and  pub- 
lished in  the  Revels  Accounts  for  the  Shakespeare 
Society,  by  Mr.  P.  Cunningham".  This  was  for  the 
season  1604-5.  Several  plays  with  names  similar  to 
those  of  Shakespeare  plays  are  named,  and  Mr.  Fleay, 


THE   THEATERS   IN   LONDON.  131 

without  apparent  authority,  puts  in  brackets  "by 
Shakespeare".  Thus:  "1604,  Nov.  i— Kings  Men,— 
The  Moor  of  Venice  (by  Shakespeare)".  The  forged 
list,  verbatim  et  literatim,  is  given  in  Phillipps,  II,  162, 
and  the  entry  corresponding  to  the  one  just  quoted 
from  Fleay  reads:  "Hallamas  Day  being  the  first  of 
November  A  Play  in  the  Banketing  House  att  Whit- 
hall  called  the  Moor  of  Venice;"  and  there  is  no  name 
of  the  author  attached  to  it. 

Another  entry  is  this:  "On  Stivens  Night  in  the 
Hall  A  Play  called  Mesur  for  Mesur."  Another:  "On 
Shrovsunday  a  Play  of  the  Merchant  of  Venice' ' .  In 
the  margin  against  the  last  two  of  these  plays  is  the 
name  "Shaxberd."  On  p.  161,  Phillipps  expressly 
says  that  this  record  is  "a  modern  forgery". 

Now  the  object  of  this  forgery  was  to  make  it  ap- 
pear that  Shakespeare's  Othello,  first  published  in 
quarto,  in  1622,  had  been  played  years  before,  or  in 
1604;  and  Measure  for  Measure,  first  published  in  the 
Folio  of  1623,  had  been  played  in  1604,  and  the  forger 
attached  the  name  Shaxberd  "to  the  latter — one  of 
player  Shakspers  many  designations — as  the  author. 
Fleay  translates  Shaxberd  into  Shakespeare,  quite  an- 
other individual. 

It  is  amusing  to  see  how  the  Shakespeare  editors 
forthwith  took  the  benefit  of  these  forgeries.  Knight, 
in  his  edition  of  the  Shakespeare  Plays,  New  York 
reprint,  1868,  prefaces  Measure  for  Measure  thus: 
"This  comedy  was  first  printed  in  the  folio  collection 
of  1623.  It  has  been  recently  ascertained  that  Measure 
for  Measure  was  presented  at  Court  by  the  King's 


132        SHAKSPKR  NOT  SHAKESPKARK. 

Players  (the  company  to  which  Shaksper  belonged)  in 
1604." 

[So  few  and  so  unimportant  have  been  the  testi- 
monies as  to  William  Shaksper' s  theatrical  career,  so 
lacking  evidences  of  any  connection  between  the  man 
and  the  Shakespeare  plays,  that  there  seems  to  have 
been  a  constant  temptation  among  his  biographers,  or 
the  commentators  on  his  supposed  plays,  to  manufacture 
testimony  and  evidence.  Hence  all  sorts  of  forgeries. 
A  singular  instance  is  mentioned  by  Dowden,  104: 
"In  January,  1852,  an  eminent  member  of  the 
(Shakespeare)  Society  of  England,  J.  Paine  Collier, 
announced  that  three  years  previously  he  had  obtained 
from  the  bookseller  Rodd  a  copy  of  the  second  Folio 
Shakespeare,  containing  many  annotations  in  a  hand 
about  the  middle  of  the  iyth  century.  Collier  sup 
posed,  or  pretended  to  suppose,  that  the  numerous 
corrections  of  the  text,  stage  directions,  etc. ,  were  the 
work  of  an  early  owner  of  the  volume,  who  through 
his  connection  with  the  theater  and  attendance  at  per- 
formances of  the  plays,  had  sources  of  trustworthy  in- 
formation as  to  the  genuine  text.  When,  in  1859, 
this  Folio  was  submitted  to  the  scrutiny  of  experts,  the 
manuscript  notes  were  declared  to  have  been  modern 
forgeries.  Pencil  tracing  was  found  to  have  guided  the 
pen  in  its  simulation  of  a  iyth  century  handwriting. 
Competent  authorities  could  not  be  deluded,  and  un- 
fortunately evidence  had  accumulated  to  .confirm  the 
impression  that  this  really  learned  and  ingenious 
scholar,  in  not  a  few  instances,  had  yielded  to  the 
temptation  to  win  for  himself  by  fraudulent  documents 


THBATKRS  IN  LONDON.  133 

a  spurious  fame.     It  seemed  to  be  the  very  wantonness 
of  literary  dishonesty."] 

Returning  to  Fleay,  following  his  list,  we  reach 
the  dates  1611-12,  and  half  a  dozen  entries  of  plays 
performed  by  the  King's  men  in  these  years  are  given. 
Among  these  there  is  no  mention  of  a  play  as  Shakes- 
peare's. I  give  one  example:  "To  J.  Hemynge  on  12 
Feb'y,  1611,  for  15  plays  before  the  King,  Queen,  and 
Prince,  by  the  King's  men." 

This  1 611-12  list  is  another  of  Cunningham's  for- 
geries, and  Mr.  Fleay  says,  173:  "It  is  the  most 
glaringly  impudent  of  the  many  forgeries  published  by 
Cunningham  and  Collier,"  etc.  On  p.  177,  he  speaks 
again  of  the  forgeries  of  1604-5,  and  now  adds:  "So 
that  the  entries  of  the  Moor  of  Venice,  The  Spanish 
May,  etc.,  are  as  yet  very  dubious."  Outside  of  the 
forged  lists,  from  1603  to  1614,  I  find  no  play  given  as 
Shakespeare's  (merely  the  title)  till  we  come  to 
1612-13.  Here  the  Revels  Account  represent  Heminge 
as  paid  for  fourteen  plays  by  the  King's  men,  without 
names  of  the  plays;  but  Fleay  gives  the  names  from 
some  other  manuscript  source, — "Winter's  Tale",  etc.; 
and  adds  iu  brackets,  apparently  without  authority, 
"by  Sh."  All  this  goes  to  establish  the  point  I  make 
that  between  1594  and  1614,  it  is  never  said  in  the 
original  authorities  that  a  "Shakespeare"  play  is 
played,  or  one  by  Shakespeare;  and  consequently 
where  there  were  two  or  more  plays  of  similar  title 
we  never  can  be  sure  that  a  Shakespeare  play  was  per- 
formed. 

Israel  Gollancz,  in  the  Othello  of  the  Temple  Shake- 
speare, 1895,  traces  the  story  that  this  play  was  acted 


134  SHAKSPKR    NOT 

in  1604  to  Malone  (1821),  who  said:  "We  know  it 
was  acted  in  1604,  and  I  have  therefore  placed  it  in 
that  year."  Gollancz  goes  on:  "For  twenty  years 
scholars  sought  in  vain  to  discover  upon  what  evi- 
dence he  knew  this  important  fact,  until  at  last,  about 
the  year  1840,  Peter  Cunningham  announced  his  dis- 
covery of  certain  accounts  of  the  Revels  at  Court,  con- 
taining the  following  item,  viz.:  the  Hallamas  Day 
item,  which  I  have  given.  Gollancz  continues:  "We 
know  that  this  manuscript  was  a  forgery,  but  strange 
to  say  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  though  the 
book  itself  is  spurious,  the  information  which  it  gives 
is  genuine, ' '  etc.  Surely  this  has  an  ancient  and  fish- 
like  smell.  It  is  plain  that  the  Shaksperians  were  too 
much  delighted  with  having  found  these  entries  of  the 
early  performing  of  certain  plays  to  give  them  up,  and 
they  would  accept  any  pretext  for  not  doing  so. 
Othello  was  first  printed  in  1622,  and  was  entered  on 
the  Stationers'  Register  in  1621.  There  was  a  play 
styled  "Venetian  Comedy",  mentioned  in  Henslow's 
Diary  as  performed  1 3  Aug. ,  1 594.  Also  there  was  a 
play  called  the  "Moor  of  Venice"  which  the  Secretary 
of  the  German  Embassy  wrote  he  had  seen  in  London, 
at  the  Globe,  in  1610.  Judge  Holmes  says  on  this,  II, 
716:  "It  is  quite  possible,  not  to  say  highly  probable, 
that  this  was  an  older  play  by  some  other  author,  and 
not  the  Othello  of  Shakespeare. ' '  And  again :  '  'There 
is  reason  for  the  opinion  that  nothing  was  known  of 
the  Shakespeare  Othello  until  it  appeared  in  the  Quarto 
of  1622."  The  motive  for  Cunningham's  forgery  is 
apparent.  It  was  the  way  to  eliminate  all  doubt  as  to 
the  earlier  play  being  Shakespeare's"  (Shaksper's). 


THE  THKATERS  IN  CONDON.         135 

Whatever  the  play  at  a  public  theater  was,  it  was 
necessarily  short,  (both  Symonds  and  Drake  tell  us 
that  the  whole  show,  the  play  and  subsequent  farce, 
occupied  about  two  hours)  and  boisterous,  and  suited 
to  an  illiterate,  brutal  audience.  Symonds  gives  an 
imaginary  visit  to  the  Fortune  in  summer  time,  but  as 
a  rule,  at  that  season  of  the  year,  the  companies  were 
strolling  up  and  down  the  land.  So  we  learn  from 
Phillipps:  '  'All  the  old  theatrical  companies  were  more 
or  less  of  an  itinerant  character".  Again:  "The 
actors  of  those  days  were,  as  a  rule,  individual  wan- 
derers". Also:  "There  was  not  a  single  company  of 
actors  in  Shakespeare's  time,  which  did  not  make  pro- 
fessional visits  throughout  nearly  all  the  English 
counties."  H.-P.,  II,  395. 

[Fleay,  Life,  41,  says:  "In  March,  1601,  the 
Chamberlains  Company  visited  the  Universities  of 
Oxford  and  Cambridge.  Their  travels  however  were 
not  confined  to  England.  In  October,  they  had 
reached  Aberdeen." 

Elizabeth  died  24th  March,  1603,  and  Phillipps  sug- 
gests that  the  company  to  which  Shaksper  belonged 
might  have  been  absent  on  a  provincial  tour.  (Phillipps 
is  trying  to  account  for  the  fact  that  his  "great  dra- 
matist' '  gave  forth  no  lamentation  on  the  death  of  the 
Queen).  "They  itinerated  a  good  deal  during  the 
next  few  months  (i.  e.,  after  May,  1603),  records  of 
their  performances  being  found  at  Bath,  Coventry, 
Shrewsbury,  and  Ipswich."  I,  211. 

'  'The  company  are  found  playing  at  Oxford  in  the 
early  part  of  the  summer  of  1604."  Id.  214. 

"On   October   9th,   1605,   Shakespeare's   company, 


136  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

having  previously  traveled  as  far  as  Barnstable,  gave 
another  performance  before  the  Mayor  and  Corpora- 
tion of  Oxford."  Id.,  214. 

"A  considerable  portion  of  1606  was  spent  by  the 
King's  company  in  provincial  travel.  They  were 
at  Oxford  in  July,  at  Leicester  in  August.  Before  the 
winter  had  set  in  they  had  returned  to  London". 
Id.,  219. 

"Shakespeare's  company  were  playing  at  Oxford  on 
September  yth,  1607".  Id.,  219. 

At  the  time  that  the  Sonnets  issued  from  the  press 
(1609),  the  author's  company  was  itinerating  in  Kent, 
playing  at  Hythe  on  the  i6th  of  May,  and  at  New 
Romney  on  the  following  day.  They  were  also  at 
Shrewsbury  at  some  unrecorded  period  in  the  same 
year."  Id.,  227. 

Plainly  these  companies  were  absent  from  London  a 
larger  part  of  the  year.  In  the  spring  and  summer 
and  part  of  the  autumn  they  strolled,  and  gathered  to 
London  before  the  Christmas  holidays.]* 

Leonard  Digges,  Ing.  231;  in  some  doggerel  verses 
prefixed  to  an  edition  of  Shakespeare's  poems,  in  1640, 
alluding  to  the  Shakespeare  plays  as  he  remembered 
them,  says  that  the  audience  at  the  Globe  (this  must 
have  been  as  a  boy,  for  Digges  was  born  in  1588,  or  he 
may  be  telling  what  he  has  heard  from  other  people) 
were  ravished: 

.     .     .     when  Cesar  would  appeare, 
And  on'the  stage  at  halfe-sword  parley  were, 
Brutus  and  Cassius     .     .     . 

*  L,ee  says,  40:  "Few  companies  remained  in  London  during 
the  summer  or  early  Autumn", 


THK  THEATERS  IN  LONDON.         137 

.     .     .     let  but  Falstaffe  come, 

Hall,  Poins,  the  rest  you  scarce  shall  have  a  roome. 

All  is  so  pestered;  let  but  Beatrice 

And  Benedicke  be  scene,  loe  in  a  trice 

The  Cockpit  Galleries,  Boxes,  all  are  full 

To  hear  Malvolio,*  that  crosse  garter 'd  Gull. 

The  audiences  of  that  day  did  not  go  to  the  Curtain 
or  the  Globe  that  they  might  be  worried  with  Wol- 
sey's  wailings,  or  wearied  with  Macbeth's  soliloquies; 
they  did  not  go  to  moralize  and  weep.  They  went  for 
fun  and  frolic,  ribaldry  and  horse-play.  The  more 
farcical  the  play,  the  more  indecent,  the  more  bloody 
and  cruel,  the  better  for  Shaksper 's  hat.  We  are  told 
by  Phillipps,  I,  100,  that  "the  audiences  of  Elizabeth's 
day  revelled  in  the  very  crudity  of  the  horrible,  so  much 
so  that  nearly  every  kind  of  bodily  torture  and  mutila- 
tion, or  even  more  revolting  incidents,  formed  part  of 
the  stock  business  of  the  theater;  murders  were  in 
special  request  in  all  kinds  of  serious  dramas." 

Mr.  Phillipps  tells  us  that  the  play  of  Titus  Andron- 
icus  was  very  popular,  that  it  was  produced  before  a 
large  audience  on  Jan.  23,  1594,  and  that  it  was  played 
at  several  theaters  in  the  year  it  appeared.  (How 
could  that  have  been  if  William  Shaksper  wrote 
it  for  his  theater,  and  owned  the  right  to  it  ?)  I^et  us 

*  Digges  apparently  has  mixed  the  Twelfth  Night  with  Much 
Ado  About  Nothing,  but  I  apprehend  that  scenes  from  the  two 
had  been  "combined  for  the  interlude  or  pantomime  offered  to 
the  clients  of  the  Globe.  Fifty  years  after  the  death  of  William 
Shaksper,  Da venant  brought  out  a  play  called  "The  Law  against 
Lovers' '  made  out  of  Measure  for  Measure  and  Much  Ado  About 
Nothing. 


138  SHAKSPER   NOT 

look  at  this  play  and  see  what  pleased  a  public  theater 
audience  in  Shaksper's  day. 

The  first  Act  discovers  the  sons  of  the  Roman  gen- 
eral, Titus  Andronicus,  about  to  slay  Alarbus,  their 
prisoner,  son  of  the  Gothic  Queen  Tamora,  whom, 
with  the  queen,  the  Romans  have  captured  in  war. 

"Away  with  him,  and  make  a  fire  straight; 
And  with  our  swords,  upon  a  pile  of  wood, 
Let's  hew  his  limbs  till  they  be  clean  consumed." 

Soon  we  are  informed  that 

"Alarbus'  limbs  are  lopped, 
And  entrails  feed  the  sacrificial  fire." 

Next,  Titus,  in  a  rage,  kills  one  of  his  sons,  Mutius. 
The  sons  of  Tamora,  whom  the  Roman  king  Satur- 
ninus  marries,  kill  Bassianus,  the  king's  brother,  and 
throw  his  body  into  a  hole  or  pit  in  the  forest.  Hav- 
ing enticed  the  beautiful  L,avinia,  the  young  wife  of 
Bassianus,  and  daughter  to  Titus,  into  this  forest,  they 
ravish  her  and  cut  off  both  hands,  cut  out  her  tongue, 
and  turn  her  loose,  thinking  she  will  be  unable  to  de- 
nounce them.  All  this  deviltry  is  done  at  the  instiga- 
tion of  Tamora,  who  hounds  the  boys  on,  urging  the 
killing  L,avinia  after  the  ravishment.  The  negro 
Aaron,  a  fiend  incarnate,  all  the  while  the  paramour  of 
Tamora,  entices  two  other  sons  of  Titus  into  the  same 
forest,  and  gets  both  to  descend  to  the  bottom  of  the 
pit  in  which  Bassianus  had  been  thrown,  under  the 
pretense  that  it  was  a  panther's  den.  Then  he  informs 
the  king  that  they  are  there,  and  that  they  murdered 
Bassianus;  on  which  the  sons  are  brought  forth  and 


THE  THEATERS  IN  LONDON.          139 

put  in  prison.  Presently  word  comes  from  the  king  to 
Titus  that  if  he  will  cut  off  one  of  his  own  hands  and 
send  it  to  the  king,  his  sons  will  be  freed.  Titus  does 
this,  getting  Aaron  to  chop  off  the  member;  and  the 
next  we  see  is  a  messenger  bringing  back  the  same 
hand,  and  the  heads  of  the  two  boys  on  a  platter.  In 
the  following  Act,  L,avinia  takes  the  end  of  a  staff  in 
her  mouth,  and  guiding  it  with  her  stumps,  writes  in 
the  sand  the  names  of  her  ravishers,  and  so  informs 
her  brothers. 

Meantime  Queen  Tamora  is  delivered  of  a  blacka- 
moor child,  and  the  nurse  appears  with  the  child  in  her 
arms,  seeking  the  sons  of  the  queen,  with  directions  to 
them  to  kill  it.  This  they  are  about  to  do,  when  Aaron 
appears  and  carries  off  the  child  as  his  own  son  and 
property.  But  before  he  departs,  he  and  the  sons  kill 
the  nurse  as  the  sole  witness  of  the  birth — Aaron 
mocking — "Weke,  weke — so  cries  a  pig  prepared  for 
the  spit". 

In  Act  V,  Titus  enters  with  a  knife  and  I^avinia 
with  a  basin,  and  the  former  cuts  the  throats  of  the 
sons  of  Tamora,  while  L,avinia  catches  the  blood. 
Out  of  the  bodies  and  blood  Titus  cooks  a  meal  which 
is  set  before  Tamora,  and  of  which  she  unwittingly 
eats.  Thereupon  Titus  taunts  her  with  the  horror, 
and  ends  by  killing  her;  and  in  return  her  husband 
Saturninus  kills  Titus,  and  one  of  Titus'  sons  kills 
Saturninus.  (It  reminds  one  of  the  piling  up  of 
"stiffs"  outside  the  saloon  doors  in  the  old  days  of 
Nevada). 

The  play  closes  with  I^ucius,  another  son  of  Titus  (he 
had  a  score)  ordering  Aaron  to  execution.  '  'See  justice 


140  SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

done  to  Aaron,  the  damn'd  Moor,"  who  probably  was 
drawn  and  quartered  forthwith,  on  the  stage,  A  de- 
lightful play,  doubtless  every  act  encored,  and  played 
often  (very  popular  we  are  assured)  in  several  theaters. 
Of  the  persons  represented  not  more  than  four  or  five 
come  out  alive,  and  one  of  these  has  been  ravished 
and  fearfully  maimed.  Titus  Andronicus  could  only 
have  been  played  in  pantomime.  Knight  says  that 
these  theaters  used  blood  as  they  would  the  paint  of 
the  property-man  of  the  theater;  and  this  was  years 
after  William  Shaksper  became  one  of  the  players. 

Knight  says  of  Romeo  and  Juliet:  '  '  There  is  enough 
for  the  excitement  of  an  uninstructed  audience;  the 
contest  between  the  houses;  Mercutio  killed;  Tybalt 
killed;  the  apparent  death  of  Juliet;  Paris  killed; 
Romeo  swallowing  poison;  Juliet  stabbing  herself." 

"In  1594,  there  was  published  "  The  Tragical 
Reign  of  Selim,  Kmperour  of  the  Turks'  '  ,  a  composi- 
tion offering  similar  attractions  (i.  e.,  murders),  but 
the  writer  was  so  afraid  of  his  massacres  being  con- 
sidered too  insipid,  that  he  thus  reveals  his  misgivings 
to  the  audience: 

'"If  this  First  Part,  gentles,  do  like  you  well 
The  Second  Part  shall  greater  murders  tell"  '  H-P. 


" 


The  'old  Jeronimo'  —  perhaps  the  most  popular 
play  of  the  early  stage,  thus  concludes  with  a  sort  of 
chorus  spoken  by  a  ghost:  — 

"  'Ah  now  my  hopes  have  end  in  their  effects, 
When  blood  and  sorrows  finish  my  desires, 
Horatio  murdered  in  his  father's  bower; 
Vile  Serberine  by  Pedringano  slain; 


THEATERS  IN  LONDON.  141 

Fair  Isabella  by  herself  misdone; 
Prince  Baltliasar  by  Belimperia  stabbed; 
The  Duke  of  Castile,  and  his  wicked  son, 
Both  done  to  death  by  old  Hieronymo'  ". 

"  This  slaughtering  was  accompanied  with  another 
peculiarity  of  the  unformed  drama — the  dumb -show. 
Words  were  sometimes  necessary  for  the  exposition  of 
the  story  .  .  .  With  a  stage  that  presented  attrac- 
tions like  these  to  the  multitude,  is  it  wonderful  that 
the  young  Shakspere  should  have  written  a  Tragedy 
of  Horrors?"  (/.  e.t  the  Titus).  Knight,  Shakspere, 
I,  675. 

Everywhere  we  find  that  the  Shakespeare  plays  were 
shortened  for  performing,  and  nowhere  do  we  find  that 
one  of  these  plays  was  performed  at  length.  '  'They  were 
shortened  for  Court  representation1 ' ,  Fleay  expressly 
tells  us.  In  the  Life,  20,  he  speaks  of  the  strollers 
cutting  down  their  plays.  "It  was  more  profitable  to 
separate  into  parties  of  half  a  dozen,  and  of  course, 
to  cut  down  their  plays' ' .  As  for  the  theaters,  on  p. 
263,  wre  read  that  the  Quarto  2nd  Henry  VI,  "is 
greatly  abbreviated  for  acting";  on  269.  he  says  of 
same  Quarto:  "The  corruption  and  omission  caused 
by  shortening  for  stage  purposes  has  been  so  great' ' , 
etc.  On  275:  "The  1597  Quarto  of  Richard  3rd  is 
evidently  an  abridged  version  made  for  the  stage,  and 
no  doubt  was  the  version  acted  during  nearly  all  of 
Elizabeth's  reign."  On  227:  "Hamlet,  Folio,  is 
evidently  a  stage  copy,  considerably  shortened  for 
stage  representation."  Plainly,  no  play  was  given  as 
"Shakespeare"  wrote  it,  but  there  were  versions, 


142  SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

more  or  less  shortened,  for  the  actors  on  tramp,  for 
the  theaters,  even  for  the  representation  at  court. 

I  once  saw  at  a  great  historical  English  fair — in  fact, 
Greenwich  Fair,  since  suppressed — a  perambulating 
company  of  players,  performing  under  a  tent — giving 
a  tragedy  after  the  pattern  described  by  Sidney,  a 
farce,  a  dance  and  song — all  within  the  period  of  forty 
minutes.  The  audience  was  rung  out,  and  the  clown, 
with  his  trumpet,  just  as  in  De  Witt's  picture,  notified 
the  public  that  another  performance  of  the  same  de- 
scription was  ready  to  begin.  And  so  it  was  kept  up 
all  day.  That  is  the  way  the  strolling  qpmpany  must 
have  managed  in  Shaksper's  day.*  To  pay  expenses, 
the  play  must  necessarity  have  been  short,  and  the 
performance  repeated  the  day  long.  When  in  London, 
from  the  limited  time  at  disposal,  the  performances 
could  not  have  been  given  at  much  greater  length. 

It  is  a  mistake  caused  by  a  misapprehension  of  the 
facts  to  say,  as  R.  G.  White  does,  and  as  John  Fiske 
does,  that  William  Shaksper  wrote  the  Shakespeare 
plays  "to  fill  the  theater  and  his  own  pockets."  Had 
the  manager  attempted  a  course  of  Shakespeare  plays, 
he  would  have  bankrupted  the  theater.  According  to 
White,  the  raison  & etre  for  the  writing  of  these  plays 
was  that  they  might  be  acted  at  William  Shaksper's 
theater.  If  they  were  not — and  they  certainly  were 
not,  because  in  the  nature  of  the  case  acting  them 

*  Craik  I<  598,  speaking  of  Rowley,  mentions  the  "fact  re- 
corded by  I^angbaine.  that  certain  of  the  scenes  of  one  of  his 
pieces,  A  Shoemaker's  a  Gentleman,  was  commonly  performed 
by  the  strolling  actors  at  Bartholomew  and  Southward  fairs." 


THE  THEATERS  IN  LONDON.      143 

there  was  impossible — then  there  was  no  reason  why 
William  Shaksper  should  worry  himself  by  writing 
plays. 

Mrs.  Pott  says:  "These  plays  were  intended  for 
the  most  part,  not  for  the  play-house,  but  for  perform- 
ance before  Elizabeth  and  James,  or  by  the  servants 
of,  or  at  the  houses  of,  the  Earls  of  Leicester,  Essex, 
Sussex  and  Pembroke.  Many  of  them  first  saw  the 
light  in  the  Middle  Temple,  and  in  the  new  hall  of 
Gray's  Inn. ' '  Another  authority  tells  us  that  ' 'most  of 
the  plays  first  appeared  on  the  occasion  of  some  grand 
festivity,  and  many  of  them  are  not  known  to  have 
been  acted  on  the  public  stage  or  by  Shakespeare's 
(Shaksper *s)  Company." 

Fleay  insists  on  the  point  of  the  absolute  subordina- 
tion of  public  performances  to  court  presentations. 
The  Chamberlain's  Company,  later  the  King's  Com- 
pany, might  give  a  scene  or  a  play  in  any  manner 
they  saw  fit  at  their  public  theater;  but  at  court  they 
were  expected  to  give  the  best — the  most  entertain- 
ing— performances  of  which  they  were  capable,  and 
we  are  expressly  told  that  for  these  performances  the 
plays  were  shortened.  No  doubt,  the  play  of  Hamlet 
performed  at  court  was  cut  down  four-  fifths,  the  larger 
part  of  the  dialogue,  all  the  speeches,  and  all  the 
philosophy  being  rejected;  the  action  and  enough  of 
the  text  to  explain  it  retained.  It  is  to  be  supposed 
that  some  Shakespeare  scenes  must  have  been  found  en- 
tertaining at  court,  else  they  would  not  have  been  given; 
but  not  a  soul  who  ever  witnessed  a  presentation  has  left 
a  word  concerning  it.  I  suspect  the  fun  of  the  exhibi- 
tion consisted  in  Alleyn's  and  Burbage's  rant  and  fus- 


144        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

tian,  and  in  the  Jim  Crow  antics  of  Rolfe's  Kempe, 
and  his  pupil  in  comedy,  William  Shaksper.  What 
were  the  rejected  parts  in  the  play  of  Hamlet  for,  if 
Shaksper  was  its  author?  Wendell  says  of  another 
play,  that  even  an  Elizabethan  audience  could  scarcely 
have  stomached  the  prolonged  philosophizing  which 
fills  pages  of  Troilus  and  Cressida.  What  was  it 
there  for,  if  Shaksper  was  the  author  ?  There  was  no 
money  in  it — quite  the  contrary — and  the  one  object 
of  this  man's  life  was  money.  So  R.  G.  White,  and 
Phillipps,  and  all  the  commentators,  ending  with  Wen- 
dell, tell  us;  so,  also,  John  Fiske  tells  us.  Why  should 
a  man  intent  on  collecting  pennies  in  hat  at  his  own 
theater  concern  himself  about  other  men's  theaters,  or 
the  audiences  at  court,  when  all  he  wanted  for  the  hat 
were  the  horrors  of  Titus  Andronicus,  or  Macbeth,  or 
the  third  Henry  VI;  or  the  murders  of  Richard  and 
the  fight  of  Bosworth  Field  ?  Why  should  he  waste 
his  valuable  time  in  elaborating  plays  for  managers  of 
other  theaters,  or  for  the  court?  And,  especially, 
why  should  he  a  second  time  take  these  plays  in  hand, 
revise  and  amend  t  and  further  extend  them  by  one- 
fourth  to  fully  twice  their  length,  merely  to  please  a 
reading  public  that  would,  as  to  most  of  the  plays, 
not  see  them  till  years  after  he  -was  in  his  grave,  and 
without  his  estate  or  his  family  being  benefited  to  the 
extent  of  one  copper! 

Swinburne,  "Shakespeare",  speaks  of  "the  patience 
and  self-respect  which  induced  Shakespeare  to  re-write 
the  triumphantly  popular  parts  of  Romeo,  of  Falstaff , 
and  of  Hamlet,  with  an  eye  to  the  literary  perfection 
and  performance  of  work,  which  in  its  first  outline  had 


THE)  THEATERS   IN   LONDON.  145 

won  the  crowning  suffrage  of  immediate  and  specu- 
lative applause."  Is  Mr.  Swinburne  quizzing  the  man 
of  Stratford  ? 

The  theory  that  this  revising  and  elaborate  amend- 
ing (with  "consummate  skill,"  etc.,)  was  done  by  the 
man  who  wrote  the  plays,  if  Shaksper,  does  not  run  on 
all  fours  with  the  other  and  usual  theory  that  this  man 
had  tossed  them  off  as  pot-boilers,  without  study  or 
preparation,  and  cared  nothing  for  them  thereafter. 

Fleay,  227,  says:  "Hamlet  is  extant  in  three  forms, 
the  Folio,  which  is  evidently  a  stage  copy  considerably 
shortened  for  stage  purposes;  the  1604  Quarto,  which 
is  a  very  fair  transcript  of  the  author's  complete  copy 
with  a  few  omissions;  and  the  1603  Quarto, imperfect 
and  inaccurate."  On  230:  "This  form  of  Hamlet  (the 
1603  Quarto)  seems  to  have  been  an  unfinished  re- 
fashioning of  the  old  play  by  Kyd,  that  had  so  long  been 
performed  by  the  Chamberlain's  men' ' ;  i.  e. ,  up  to  1601 , 
at  least,  the  date  at  which  Mr.  Fleay  supposes  the  1603 
Quarto  to  have  been  prepared.  On  233:  "We  have,  in 
the  forms  of  this  play,  an  example  of  Shakespeare's 
hurried  revision  of  the  works  of  an  earlier  writer;  of 
the  full  working  out  of  his  own  conception  in  the  shape 
fittest  for  private  reading  (the  1604  Quarto),  and, 
finally,  of  his  practical  adaptation  of  it  to  the  require- 
ments of  the  stage."  (The  Folio.)  This  substan- 
tiates the  view  which  I  have  taken  that  the  Shakespeare 
plays  were  written  for  private  reading,  and  not  for  the 
public  theaters.  To  fill  the  theater,  wrhich  White  and 
Fiske  say  was  William  Shaksper' s  great  object  in  life 
(adding,  however,  "and  his  own  pockets"),  it  seems 
that  the  "imperfect  and  inaccurate"  Quarto  of  1603 


146  SHAKSPER   NOT 

was  enough  for  many  years,  the  abridgment  of  the 
1604  Quarto,  according  to  Fleay,  not  having  been 
made  before  1609,  or  1610,  just  as  Shaksper  was  re- 
tiring to  Stratford. 

All  that  William  Shaksper  wanted  in  order  to  fill 
the  theater  and  his  own  pockets  was  a  rapid  and  bloody 
interlude,  and  plenty  of  extemporaneous  and  ribald 
dialogue.  Anything  beyond  that  would  be  a  violation 
of  the  rights  of  the  groundlings,  to  be  vigorously  re- 
sented. There  is  no  Shakespeare  play  in  which  the 
dialogue  or  monologue,  in  excess  of  what  was  essential 
for  such  an  audience,  was  not  in  the  proportion  of 
twenty  to  one.  Was  William  Shaksper,  as  the  ad- 
miring Phillipps  depicts  him,  the  sort  of  man  to 
labor  over  what  was  worthless  and  unendurable  from 
the  theater  and  pocket  point  of  view,  to  be  making 
future  ages  his  first  thought  and  his  pocket  the  sec- 
ond; or  carried  away  by  the  divine  afflatus  inspira- 
tion as  Phillipps  calls  it,  to  forget  pocket  entirely? 
Not  much!  Dr.  Ingleby  thinks  that  "the  drift  of  his 
plays  must  have  been  intelligible  to  the  penny  knaves 
who  pestered  the  theaters,  but  his  profound  reach  of 
thought  and  his  unrivaled  knowledge  of  human  nature 
was  as  far  beyond  the  vulgar  ken  as  were  the  higher 
graces  of  his  poetry.  It  is  to  men  of  sensibility 
that  Shakespeare"  (not  Shaksper)  "appeals  as  a  man 
of  genius;  and  it  is  to  the  literary  class  we  must  look 
for  the  impress  of  that  genius".  Preface,  XII.  And 
he  adds:  "We  are  at  length  slowly  rounding  to  a  just 
estimate  of  his  works."  If  this  language  of  Dr. 
Ingleby  means  anything,  it  is  that  the  plays  of 
Shakespeare  were  written  for  the  literate  class — not 


THEATERS  IN  LONDON.  147 

the  illiterate — and  that  it  is  but  now,  at  the  close  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  fully  three  hundred  years 
after  they  were  written,  that  the  literate  class  is  slowly 
rounding  to  a  just  estimate  of  them.  (As  we  have  be- 
fore seen,  Ingleby  expressly  says  that  for  a  full  hun- 
dred years  from  1592  these  plays  were  not  much 
thought  of. )  Very  slowly  indeed  it  would  seem,  when  a 
lecturer  in  one  of  our  foremost  universities  can  teach  his 
pupils  that  the  writing  of  such  plays  as  Shakespeare's  is 
"within  anybody's  power;"  and  that  to  have  created 
Shakespeare's  works  involved  no  more  wonderful  an  im- 
aginative feat  than  did  the  achievement  of  his  material 
fortune  by  showman  Shaksper.  Dr.  Rolfe,  who  claims 
to  be  an  authority  on  these  plays,  affirms  that  the  au- 
thor of  them  "had  little  Latin,  perhaps  none",  echo- 
ing the  words  of  Ben  Jonson  on  Stratford  Shaksper; 
and  here  comes  Dr.  Fiske  pulling  tandem  to  the  same 
team.  "Little  Latin,  perhaps  none"  is  another  way 
of  saying  that  the  man  who  wrote  the  Shakespeare 
plays  was  an  uneducated  man. 

If  the  plays  have  not  yet  come  to  be  understood  and 
appreciated  by  these  learned  and  literate  gentlemen, 
we  may  be  sure  that  they  were  far  above  the  best 
heads  of  the  i6th  century,  and  quite  out  of  sight  of 
the  vulgar.  Therefore  we  are  safe  in  asserting  that 
they  were  not  written  for  the  stinkards  and  prostitutes 
of  William  Shaksper' s  theaters,  and  to  fill  that  man's 
pocket;  and  the  inference  is  plain  that  quite  another 
hand  than  Shaksper' s  wrote  them. 

Charles  Lamb,  "On  the  Tragedies  of  Shakespeare", 
says:  "The  truth  is,  the  characters  of  Shakespeare  are 
so  much  the  objects  of  meditation  rather  than  of  inter- 


148  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPKARE. 

est  or  curiosity  as  to  their  actions,  that  while  we  are 
reading  any  of  his  great  original  characters — Macbeth, 
Richard,  even  lago — we  think  not  so  much  of  the 
crimes  they  commit,  as  of  the  ambition,  the  aspiring 
spirit,  the  intellectual  activity,  which  prompt  them  to 
leap  over  these  moral  fences.  So  little  do  the  actions 
comparatively  affect  us,  that  while  the  impulses,  the 
inner  mind  in  all  its  perverted  greatness,  solely  seems 
real  and  is  exclusively  attended  to,  the  crime  is  com- 
paratively nothing.  But  when  we  see  these  things 
represented,  the  acts  which  they  do  are  compara- 
tively everything,  their  impulses  nothing.  .  .  . 
The  too  close  pressing  semblance  of  reality  (in  acting) 
gives  a  pain  and  an  uneasiness  which  totally  destroys 
all  the  delight  which  the  words  in  the  book  convey, 
where  the  deed  doing  never  presses  upon  us  with  the 
painful  sense  of  presence;  it  seems  rather  to  belong  to 
history — to  something  past  and  inevitable,  if  it  has 
anything  to  do  with  time  at  all.  The  sublime  images, 
the  poetry  alone,  is  that  which  is  present  to  our 
minds  in  the  reading."  The  conclusion  of  all  of 
which  is,  that  these  plays  were  meant  for  the  closet 
rather  than  the  stage,  for  reading  rather  than  for 
acting. 

Again,  L,amb  says:  "I  cannot  help  being  of  opinion 
that  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  are  less  calculated  for 
performance  on  a  stage  than  of  almost  any  other 
dramatist  whatever.  Their  distinguishing  excellence 
is  a  reason  that  they  should  be  so.  There  is  so  much 
in  them  which  comes  not  under  the  provision  of  act- 
ing, with  which  eye,  and  tone,  and  gesture  have  noth- 
ing to  do."  And;  "Lear  is  essentially  impossible  to 


THE   THEATERS   IN   LONDON.  149 

be  represented  on  a  stage.  .  .  .  The  Lear  of 
Shakespeare  cannot  be  acted.  The  contemptible  ma- 
chinery by  which  they  mimic  the  storm  which  he  goes 
out  in  is  not  more  inadequate  to  represent  the  horrors 
of  the  real  elements,  than  any  actor  can  be  to  repre- 
sent Lear.  .  .  .  The  play  is  beyond  all  art,  as  the 
tamperings  with  it  show  ;  it  is  too  hard  and  stony;  it 
must  have  love  scenes  and  a  happy  ending.  It  is  not 
enough  that  Cordelia  is  a  daughter,  she  must  shine  as 
a  lover  too.  Tate  has  put  his  hook  in  the  nostrils  of 
this  Leviathan,  for  Garrick  and  his  followers,  the 
showmen  of  scene,  to  draw  the  mighty  beast  about 
more  easily." 

Tennyson  has  left  us  his  opinion  that  "Lear  can- 
not possibly  be  acted;  it  is  too  titanic.  .  .  . 
No  play — not  even  the  Agamemnon — is  so  terrifically 
human". 

Gollancz  says:  "For  more  than  a  century  and  a 
half,  Tate's  perversion  of  Lear  held  the  stage.  It  was 
to  this  acting  edition  that  Lamb  referred  in  his 
famous  criticism.  Garrick,  Kemble,  Kean,  and  other 
great  actors  were  quite  content  with  this  travesty,  but 
the  Lear  of  Shakespeare  cannot  be  acted."  Charles 
Knight  says  of  another  of  these  plays:  "The  feeling 
which  the  study  of  Shakespeare' s  Troilus  and  Cressida 
slowly  but  certainly  calls  forth,  is  that  of  almost  pros- 
tration before  the  marvelous  intellect  wrhich  has  pro- 
duced it.  But  this  is  the  result  of  study,  as  we  have 
said.  The  play  cannot  be  understood  upon  a  superficial 
reading:  it  is  full  of  the  most  subtle  art.  We  may  set 
aside  particular  passages,  and  admire  their  eloquence — • 
their  profound  wisdom:  but  it  is  long  before  the  play  as 


150  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKKSPEARE. 

a  whole}  obtains  its  proper  mastery  over  the  understand- 
ing." And  yet,  these  plays,  entirely  over  the  heads 
of  the  theater  goers  of  any  stage  of  the  1 6th  century, 
and  nearly  as  much  so  to-day,  are  supposed  to  have 
been  expressly  written  for  the  entertainment  of  the 
rabble  of  London,  just  emerging  from  barbarism,  and 
thrown  off  merely  as  pot-boilers  by  a  tramp  player. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  William  Shaksper  ever 
received  one  penny  royalty  on  a  Shakespeare  play,  or 
any  other  play.  There  is  no  evidence  that  he  ever 
possessed  a  property  in  any  Shakespeare  or  other 
play;  and  when  he  died,  no  Shakespeare,  or  other 
play,  was  found  among  his  personal  effects;  nor  was 
there  mention  of  anything  of  the  kind,  or  of  any  literary 
matter  whatever  in  his  last  Will.  These  plays  were 
entered  on  the  Stationers'  Register,  not  in  the  name 
of  one  publisher,  but  of  nearly  as  many  publishers  as 
there  were  different  plays.  Most  of  them  in  their 
successive  editions  appeared  without  an  author's  name, 
or  one  edition  of  a  given  play  would  be  anonymous, 
and  the  next  not.  Ten  years  after  William  Shaksper 
is  supposed  to  have  begun  to  write  plays,  a  publisher 
used  the  name  of  "William  Shakespeare"  on  a  title 
page,  prompted  to  do  so,  I  believe,  by  the  extraor- 
dinary success  of  certain  poems  which  had  borne  the 
sobriquet  of  "William  Shake- speare",  and  after  that, 
some  of  this  series  of  plays  bore  that  name,  while 
others  did  not,  but  issued  anonymously.  As  I  have 
before  said,  the  first  appearance  of  a  Shakespeare 
play  was  usually  on  the  occasion  of  some  grand  fes- 
tivity at  Court  or  elsewhere,  and  then  in  a  quite  dif- 
ferent form  from  the  same  play  when  it  came  to  be 


THE   THEATERS   IN   CONDON.  151 

printed.  No  doubt  the  manager  of  the  Curtain  or  the 
Globe  was  at  liberty  (purchased  from  the  publishers 
or  not)  to  adopt  such  scenes  from  these  or  any  other 
printed  plays,  as  would  suit  the  people  who  looked  to 
him  for  entertainment.  He  was  not  the  man  to  work 
for  nothing,  to  write  a  play  of  ten  thousand  words  for 
private  reading,  when  one  thousand  words  were  all  he 
could  use,  or  wanted  for  his  public  theater.  This  man 
had  a  mission  to  perform — so  Wendell  tells  us,  and  he 
knows — to  make  a  fortune,  and  he  accomplished  it. 
All  his  life  he  worked  to  that  end,  and  what  did  not 
tend  to  that  end  was  not  done  by  him. 

Even  at  the  present  day,  no  one  of  the  Shakespeare 
plays  is  put  upon  the  stage  as  it  left  its  author' s  hand, 
but  all  have  been  altered  and  abridged  according  to 
the  whims  of  successive  generations  of  actors  and 
editors.  With  the  attractions  of  artistic  scenery, 
trained  and  accomplished  actors,  beautiful  and  su- 
perbly costumed  actresses,  and  music,  it  is  hard  to 
make  an  abbreviated  Shakespeare  play  attract  the 
town  for  a  week  together;  and  most  of  the  audience 
go,  not  to  hear  the  words  and  wisdom  of  Shakespeare, 
but  to  see  the  beauty  and  fashion  in  the  boxes,  or  the 
splendid  pageant  on  the  stage.  That  is  what  most 
people  nowadays  go  to  the  representation  of  a  Shake- 
speare play  for.* 

*After  the  above  lines  were  written,  I  read  in  Munsey's  Maga- 
zine for  May,  1896:  "During  one  week  in  March,  there  were 
three  productions  of  Shakespeare  plays  at  as  many  Broadway 
houses.  By  many  this  might  be  hailed  as  a  happy  antidote  to 
the  rage  for  vaudevilles.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  three  presenta- 
tions were  merely  the  realization  of  cherished  personal  ambitions 


152  SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPKARS. 

A  small  minority,  consisting  of  reading  and  culti- 
vated persons,  really  go  for  better  reasons.  But  how 
many  would  go  if  there  were  no  beauty  and  fashion, 
no  ladies  unless  masked,  no  scenery,  and  if  the  female 
characters  were  personated  (or  travestied)  by  men  and 
boys?  How  many,  if  the  performance  took  place  be- 
neath the  open  sky,  and  under  the  barbarous  condi- 
tions which  prevailed  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth  ?  Not 
one;  and  it  is  absurd  to  suppose  that  the  public,  whom 
Johnson  characterized  as  gross  and  dark,  and  especially 
the  lower  class  of  people,  who,  according  to  the  same 
authority,  were  but  just  emerging  from  barbarism, 

on  the  part  of  star  performers.  By  tradition  Shakespeare  is  re- 
garded as  the  top  round  of  the  mummer's  ladder.  To  be  sure, 
if  the  Bard  of  Avon  should  appear  on  Gotham's  Rialto  with  the 
manuscript  of  Julius  Caesar,  or  Romeo  and  Juliet,  in  his  pocket, 
he  would  find  just  as  hard  a  row  to  hoe,  in  securing  a  staging,  as 
does  Skaggs  of  Skeneateles,  with  his  'Sixteen  Wives  to  a  Hus- 
band', of  more  modern  make.  The  managers.  .  .  .  know 
that  Shakespeare  does  not  pay  unless  he  is  well  sugar-coated 
with  unequaled  scenic  effect,  and  even  then  it  is  touch  and  go 
if  you  ever  get  your  money  back."  And  in  Book  News,  for 
May,  1896,  I  read  this:  "It  is  that  part  of  the  theater-going 
public  which  is  respectable  and  absolutely  commonplace  that 
Mr.  Daly  appeals  to.  ...  This  is  what  Mr.  Daly  applies  to 
Shakespeare.  He  first  cuts  out  every  frank  phrase  in  the  play, 
then  every  scene  that  is  not  rapid  and  spicy,  then  he  upholsters 
it,  and  then  he  turns  loose  on  it  his  troupe  of  society  actors. 
He  knows  his  world."  Showman  Shaksper  knew  his  world 
also,  and  was  not  such  a  fool  as  to  present  a  Shakespeare  play 
as  written  to  the  audiences  of  the  Curtain. 

Fleay,  Hist.,  169,  says:  "I  am  sure  that  no  popular  audience 
(in  our  day)  would  be  attracted  by  Shakespeare's  poetry,  or 
Irving's  acting,  were  it  not  for  the  subsidiary  aids  of  scenery, 
upholstery,  splendid  dress  and  euphonious  melody." 


THE  THEATERS   IN   LONDON.  153 

could  have  been  attracted  by  these  plays,  in  the  shape 
in  which  we  have  them,  at  the  public  theater,  in  1590 
or  later.* 

There  is  scarcely  any  description  extant  of  the  per- 
formance of  a  possible  Shakespeare  play  at  the  theater 
between  1587  and  1623 — anything  beyond,  the  bare 
title  of  a  play,  and  then,  as  I  have  said,  there  is  never 
coupled  with  it  the  name  of  Shakespeare.  What 
there  is,  is  chiefly  contained  in  the  note-book  of 
Dr.  Simon  Forman,  an  astrologer  of  that  period. 
Mr.  Phillipps,  II,  87,  says:  "In  the  Ashmole  col- 
lection of  manucripts  is  a  little  tract,  in  the  autograph 
of  Dr.  Simon  Forman,  giving  his  accounts  of  the  rep- 
resentation of  three  of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  namely, 
The  Winter's  Tale,  at  the  Globe,  15  May,  1611;  Cym- 
beline  (time  and  place  not  given),  and  Macbeth,  at 
the  Globe,  20  April,  1610."  That  these  were  Shake- 
speare's plays  is  Mr.  Phillipps'  assertion,  but  Forman 
nowhere  says  they  were.  Of  Macbeth,  H.-P.  says,  I, 
230,  "that  it  is  the  only  contemporary  notice  that  has 
been  discovered."  Besides  the  accounts  of  Forman, 
there  is  a  brief  outline  of  the  plot  of  Twelfth  Night, 
perhaps  the  Shakespeare  play  of  that  name,  perhaps 

*Dr.  Johnson,  Preface  to  Shakespeare's  Works,  1765,  says: 
"The  English  nation,  in  the  time  of  Shakespeare,  was  yet  strug- 
gling to  emerge  from  barbarity.  .  .  .  Literature  was  yet 
confined  to  professed  scholars  or  to  men  and  women  of  high 
rank.  The  public  was  gross  and  dark." 

He  also  tells  us  that  if  such  plays  as  those  of  Shakespeare 
were  written  in  1765,  the  audience  would  not  sit  them  out,  thus: 
"He  has  scenes  of  undoubted  excellence,  but  perhaps  not  one 
play  which,  if  it  were  now  exhibited  as  the  work  of  a  contem- 
porary writer,  would  be  heard  to  the  conclusion." 


154  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

not,  played  at  the  Middle  Temple,  by  John  Manning' 
ham,  occupying  but  four  lines  in  Mr.  Phillipps'  book; 
and  that  is  all  that  any  of  the  writers  during  thirty 
odd  years  gave  of  the  representation  of  a  play  which 
might  have  been  a  Shakespeare  play.  This  is  a  re- 
markable state  of  things.  Shakespeare  plays  per- 
formed at  William  Shaksper's  theaters  for  thirty  years, 
written  expressly  to  fill  his  theaters  and  his  pockets, 
as  Shakspereans  say — the  talk  of  the  town — a  new 
play  the  event  of  the  season — so  Halliwell- Phillipps 
says,  and  not  the  slightest  testimony  has  reached  this 
age,  that  any  educated  man,  any  man  of  letters,  any 
man  eminent  in  any  department  of  knowledge,  or  even 
any  man  belonging  to  the  upper  classes,  ever  went  to 
see  a  Shakespeare  play,  not  merely  at  a  public  theater, 
but  at  a  private  one,  or  at  court.  The  quack  (''char- 
latan", Fleay  calls  him),  Simon  Forman,  saw  three 
plays  with  names  like  those  of  certain  Shakespeare 
plays  in  some  sort  of  presentation,  and  John  Manning- 
ham  records  in  his  diary  in  the  briefest  manner  that  a 
play  called  Twelfth  Night  was  had  at  "our  feast". 
He  does  not  say  that  it  was  a  Shakespeare  play;  but  it 
was  "near  to  that  in  Italian  called  Inganni";  and  for 
aught  that  appears  it  may  not  have  been  a  Shakespeare 
play.  That  is  all,  and  there  is  no  record  of  any  other 
man,  high  or  low,  having  witnessed  any  of  them,  any- 
where or  at  any  time.  If  such  plays  were  performed 
with  the  effect  Halliwell- Phillipps  asserts,  they  should 
have  been  mentioned  in  private  correspondence,  in 
diaries,  in  pamphlets  or  books.  It  was  an  age  of 
diaries;  and  long  letters  filled  with  the  gossip  of  the 
town,  and  the  latest  news,  public  and  private,  went 


THE   THEATERS   OF   CONDON.  155 

from  London  to  all  quarters  of  the  kingdom,  serving 
the  purpose  of  newspapers,  which  were  invented  only 
at  the  close  of  the  lyth  century.  Later  in  that  cen- 
tury, these  plays  are  repeatedly  mentioned  in  diaries  or 
books,  and  criticisms  of  both  play  and  actors  are  re- 
corded at  length.  This  makes  it  the  more  remarkable, 
that  the  Shakespeare  plays,  having  had  the  popularity 
claimed  for  them  by  modern  Shakspereans,  should  not 
have  been  mentioned  at  all  in  either  diary  or  corre- 
spondence contemporary  with  the  career  of  William 
Shaksper; — Ingleby  and  Furnivall  are  witness  to  the 
fact.  One  would  suppose  that  a  series  of  Shakespeare 
plays  anywhere  would  have  attracted  some  one  else 
than  the  rabble  of  London.  As  Ingleby  says:  "The 
absence  of  sundry  great  names,  with  which  no  pains 
of  research  could  connect  the  most  trivial  allusions, 
is  tacitly  significant." 

The  significance  consists  in  this,  that  it  is  evident 
that  scholars  and  poets  and  philosophers,  and,  in  gen- 
eral, literary  men,  did  not  go  to  see  these  plays  in  the 
public  theaters,*  (there  is  no  existing  evidence  that  a 

*  Morgan,  147:  "At  the  same  time  that  Bacon  and  Shake- 
speare are  living,  unknown  to  each  other  respectively,  in  Lon- 
don, there  also  dwelt  three  other  gentlemen— Sir  Walter  Raleigh, 
Edmund  Spenser,  and  Sir  Tobie  Matthew.  We,  therefore,  actu- 
ally have  four  well-known  gentlemen  of  the  day  in  Ix>ndon, 
gentlemen  of  elegant  tastes,  poets,  men  about  town,  critics, 
who,  if  the  town  were  being  convulsed  by  the  production  at  a 
theater  of  by  far  the  most  brilliant  miracles  of  genius  that  the 
world  has  ever  seen,  ought  not  in  the  nature  of  things,  to  have 
been  utterly  misinformed  as  to  the  circumstances.  The  four 
have  left  precisely  such  memoranda  of  their  time  as  are  of  as- 
sistance to  us  here.  Bacon,  in  his  Apothegms.  Spenser  in  his 


156  SHAKSPJCR   NOT   SHAKESPKAR3. 

Shakespeare  play  was  performed  in  a  private  theater 
during  William  Shaksper's  career),  and  if  any  such 
persons  saw  one  of  them  at  Court,  he  did  not  deem  it 
of  enough  importance  to  speak  of  it  in  a  letter,  or  to 
note  it  down  in  his  diary.  If  the  Shakespeare  plays 
were  seen  at  a  theater  at  all,  it  was  before  an  audience 
illiterate,  '  'gross  and  dark' ' ,  and  the  presentation  was 
necessarily  of  a  character  to  suit  and  please  that  sort 
of  audience. 

To  return  to  Forman's  account  of  Macbeth:  ' 'There 
was  to  be  observed,  first,  how  Mackbeth  and  Bancko 
ridinge  throwe  a  wood"  (that  is,  they  appeared  on 
the  stage  when  the  curtain  was  raised  [if  there  was  a 
curtain]  mounted  on  wooden  horses,  for  as  Phillipps 
tells  us,  II,  259,  rude  models  of  horses,  the  bodies 
dilated  with  hoops  and  laths,  were  familiar  objects  on 
the  early  English  stage),  "there  stode  before  him 
three  women  feiries  or  nimphes"  (the  weird  sisters 
were  personated  by  men  whose  heads  were  disfigured 
by  grotesque  periwigs,  H.-P.,  1.  c.).  "And  when 

poems,  and  Raleigh  and  Matthew  in  their  remains — appear  to 
have  stumbled  on  no  trace  of  such  a  character  as  'Shake- 
speare '  in  all  their  sauntering  about  London.  Especially  on 
one  occasion  does  Sir  Tobie  devote  himself  to  a  subject  matter, 
wherein,  if  there  had  been  any  Shakespeare  in  ken,  he  would, 
we  think,  very  naturally  have  mentioned  him.  In  the  Address 
to  the  Reader,  prefixed  to  one  of  his  works,  he  says,  speaking 
of  his  own  date:  'I  doubt  if  it  will  go  near  to  pass  any  other 
nations  of  Europe  to  muster  out  in  any  age  four  men,  who,  in 
so  many  respects  should  be  able  to  excel  four  such  as  we  are 
able  to  show — Cardinal  Wolsey,  Sir  Thomas  More,  Sir  Philip 
Sidney,  and  Sir  Francis  Bacon.  For  they  were  all  a  kind  of 
monsters  in  their  various  ways",  etc. 


THE)   THKATERS   IN   CONDON.  157 

Mackbeth  had  murdred  the  kinge,  the  blod  on  his 
hands  could  not  be  washed  off  by  any  means,  nor 
from  his  wifes  hands  which  handled  the  bluddi  dag- 
gers. .  .  .  The  murder  being  known  Dunkins 
two  sons  fled.  Then  Mackbeth,  for  fear  of  Bancko, 
caused  him  to  be  murdered  on  the  way  as  he  rode" 
(on  the  wooden  horse).  "The  ghoste  of  Banco  came 
and  sat  down  in  the  chair  behind  him.  And  he, 
turning  about  to  sit  down  again,  sawe  the  ghoste  of 
Banco,  which  fronted  him  so,  that  he  fell  into  a  great 
passion  of  fear  and  fury,  uttering  many  words  about 
his  murder.  .  ..  Then  Mac  Dove  fled  to  Eng- 
land. ...  In  the  mean  tyme  Mackbeth  slew 
Me  Doves  wife  and  children,  and  after  the  battelle 
Mac  Dove  slew  Mackbet.  Mackbetes  wife  did  rise 
in  the  night  in  her  slepe,  and  walked  and  talked  and 
confessed  all". 

There  is  nothing  in  this  account  implying  that  the 
performance  was  more  than  a  pantomime,  with  here 
and  there  an  explanatory  word  thrown  in,  what  Fleay 
styles  a  dumb -show,  and  which  was  very  popular. 
We  hear  of  the  action  only,  and  rapid  action,  and  it 
all  took  place  in  the  brief  afternoon,  on  the  bare  stage, 
one  thing  succeeding  another  in  plain  view  of  the 
crowd.  The  wooden  horse  stood  there  at  the  begin- 
ning, and  Macbeth  and  Banquo  must  have  dismounted, 
while  the  beast  remained  for  Banquo  to  mount  again, 
in  order  that  he  might  be  cut  down  as  he  rode.  We 
can  see  it  all — the  three  ' 'nimphes' ' ,  the  arrival  at  Dun- 
can's  court — a  placard  on  the  wall  to  explain  that  this 
was  the  article;  Duncan  coming  to  Macbeth' s  castle 
(another  placard);  the  murder  of  Duncan  and  of  the 


158  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE). 

guards;  the  bloody  daggers,  and  I^ady  Macbeth,  in 
her  sleep,  walking  and  talking;  the  cutting  down  of 
Banquo;  the  ghost  in  the  chair;  the  flight  of  Macduff, 
and  the  murder  of  his  wife  and  babes;  finally  the  bat- 
tle and  death  of  Macbeth.  Dr.  Forman  says  nothing 
of  the  speeches  or  dialogue  of  the  play,  the  very  part 
and  the  only  part,  that  to-day  would  be  written  of  by 
an  eye-witness  of  the  performance  as  worth  recol- 
lecting. 

"The  raven  himself  is  hoarse 
That  croaks  the  fatal  entrance  of  Duncan 
Under  my  battlements.     Come  you  spirits 
That  tend  on  mortal  thoughts,  unsex  me  here; 
And  fill  me  from  the  crown  to  the  toe,  top-full 
Of  direst  cruelty". 

"Is  this  a  dagger  that  I  see  before  me 
The  handle  toward  my  hand  ?  ' ' 

"Meth  ought  I  heard  a  voice  say  'Sleep  no  more! 
Macbeth  hath  murdered  sleep!'  " 

"Infirm  of  purpose 
Give  me  the  dagger". 

"Thou  canst  not  say  I  did  it,  never  shake 
Thy  gory  locks  at  me. ' ' 

"Avaunt  and  quit  my  sight!" 

"Thy  bones  are  marrowless,  thy  blood  is  cold, 

Thou  hast  no  speculation  in  those  eyes 

Which  thou  dost  glare  with". 

"Here's  the  smell  of  blood  still;  all  the  perfume  of 
Arabia  will  not  sweeten  this  little  hand. ' ' 

Nothing  of  all  this.     The  action  of   the  play  was 
evidently  what  struck  Dr.  Forman.     There  can  be  no 


THE   THKATBRS   IN   CONDON.  159 

certainty  that  the  play  in  question  was  the  Macbeth 
of  the  Folio.  There  are  omissions  in  Forman's  ac- 
count which  are  incomprehensible  if  he  was  seeing  the 
Shakespeare  play — as  the  witch  scenes  and  the  incanta- 
tions. He  saw  "three  women  fairies  or  nimphes," 
and  nothing  more  is  said  of  them.  So  of  the  appari- 
tions and  Birnam  wood,  there  is  not  a  word. 

We  may  be  sure  that  if  it  was  a  Shakespeare  play 
the  speeches  and  soliloquies  were  not  given;  that  the 
dialogues  were  cut  down  to  what  was  merely  necessary 
to  explain  the  action;  and  that  the  action  was  reduced 
a  full  half.  The  audiences  were  like  so  many  chil- 
dren— cruel  children.  They  wanted  no  philosophy, 
no  metaphysics,  no  long-drawn  speeches — nothing  but 
blood. 

Mr.  Phillipps  has  told  us  that  they  reveled  in  the 
horrible,  and  that  murders  were  in  special  request. 
They  were  made  up  of  the  scourings  of  London,  the 
vile,  the  vicious,  and  the  ignorant;  the  men  and  boys 
who  used  to  flock  to  the  hangings  and  drawings  and 
quarterings;  and  who  regretted  the  good  old  times 
when  there  were  roastings  at  the  stake.  Blood  they 
wanted,  and  in  the  action  of  such  plays  as  Macbeth, 
and  Titus  Andronicus,  and  Henry  VI,  they  got  their 
fill  of  it.  How  they  yelled  as  Duncan  and  the  guards 
were  stabbed,  and  the  imitation  blood  ran  in  quarts; 
as  Banquo  tumbled  from  the  wooden  horse,  at  the 
shrieks  of  Lady  Macduff  and  the  children;  at  the 
final  battle! 

In  the  same  way  Dr.  Forman  gives  the  bare  action 
of  Cymbelme  and  the  Winter's  Tale:  "Remember  also 
the  storri  of  Cymbelin,  King  of  England  in  Lucius 


160         SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPKARE. 

tyme;  how  Lucius  came  from  Octavus  Cesar  for 
tribut,  and  being  denied,  after  sent  Lucius  with  a 
grate  armi  of  soldiars,  who  landed  at  Milford  Haven, 
and  aifter  wer  vanquished  by  Cimbalin,  and  Lucius 
taken  prisoner;  and  all  by  means  of  three  outlawes;  of 
the  which  two  of  them  were  the  sonns  of  Cimbalin, 
stolen  from  him  when  they  were  but  two  years  old  by 
an  old  man  whom  Cimbalin  banished,  and  he  kept 
them  as  his  own  sonns  twenty  years  with  him  in  a 
cave;  and  how  one  of  them  slew  Cloten,  that  was  the 
quens  sonn  going  to  Milford  Haven  to  sek  the  love 
of  Imogen,  the  Kinges  daughter,  whom  he  had  ban- 
ished also  for  lovinge  his  daughter;  and  how  the 
Italian  that  cam  from  her  love  conveied  himself  into  a 
cheste,  and  said  yt  was  a  chest  of  plate  sent  from  her  love 
and  others  to  be  presented  to  the  Kinge;  and  in  the  deep- 
est of  the  night,  she  being  aslepe,  he  opened  the  cheste, 
and  came  forth  of  yt,  and  viewed  her  in  her  bed,  and 
the  marks  of  her  body,  and  toke  away  her  braslet  and 
after  accusing  her  of  adultery  to  her  love,  etc. ,  and  in 
th'  end  how  he  came  with  the  Remains  into  England; 
and  was  taken  prisoner,  and  after  reveled  to  Imogen, 
who  had  turned  herself  into  man's  apparell,  and  fled 
to  mete  her  love  at  Milford  Haven  and  chancsed  to  fall 
on  the  cave  in  the  woods  wher  her  two  brothers  were; 
and  how  by  eating  a  sleeping  dram,  they  thought  she 
had  been  deed,  and  laid  her  in  the  wodes,  and  body  of 
Cloten  by  her  in  her  loves  apparell  that  he  left  be- 
hind him;  and  how  she  was  found  by  Lucius,"  etc. 
Here  is  no  hint  of  speeches  or  dialogue,  nothing  but 
action,  and  suitable  to  a  Dumb-Show.  The  story  of 
the  Winter's  Tale  is  described  in  the  same  way.  These 


THE   THEATERS    IN   I<ONDON.  l6l 

narratives  sustain  the  view  that  the  Shakespeare  plays 
were  not  performed  at  the  public  theaters,  but  skele- 
tons, or  special  scenes  from  them  only;  and  those,  it 
is  highly  probable,  most  often  in  pantomime. 

Both  Fleay  and  Knight  tell  us  that  dumb-shows,  a 
new  style  of  playing  introduced  from  Italy,  were  very 
popular  in  the  last  years  of  the  century.  And  Ham- 
let, in  1603,  implies  the  same  thing.  The  action  of  a 
dumb-show  or  a  spectacular  scene,  if  there  were  blood 
enough,  would  attract  an  audience  to  fill  the  diminu- 
tive theater;  but  it  is  not  to  be  believed,  and  cannot  be 
proved,  that  the  Shakespeare  plays  were  ever  performed 
at  length  or  were  anywhere  popular.  Mr.  Phillipps 
would  have  us  believe  that  a  new  Shakespeare  play 
was  the  event  of  the  year  (1592)  and  that  the  town 
was  in  a  furore  over  it,  but  when  we  search  for  the 
proofs  of  this,  they  are  remarkable  for  their  absence. 
He  tells  us  that  Henry  VI  (meaning  Shakespeare's) 
was  the  success  of  the  year — visited  by  ten  thousand 
persons,  and  refers  to  Nash  as  his  authority.  Nash 
says  (Ingleby,  5):  "How  it  would  have  joyed  brave 
Talbot  to  think  that  after  he  had  lain  two  hundred 
years  in  his  tomb,  he  should  triumph  again  on  the 
stage,  and  have  his  bones  new  embalmed  with  the 
tears  of  ten  thousand  spectators  at  least  (at  several 
times),"  etc.  On  this,  Ingleby  says  that  "the  play 
in  question  may  or  may  not  be  identical  with  the  first 
part  of  Henry  VI  of  the  Folio  of  1623";  and  anyhow 
"whether  Shakespeare  had  any  hand  in  this  latter 
play  is  to  say  the  least  problematical."  According 
to  Ingleby,  therefore,  Phillipps  was  not  justified  in 
citing  Nash  as  witness  to  the  popularity  of  a  Shake- 


1 62  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

speare  play,  for  the  probabilities  are  that  the  play  was 
not  a  Shakespeare  play.  As  we  have  before  seen, 
later  commentators  of  distinction  are  agreed  that  ist 
Henry  VI  was  written  in  collaboration  by  Marlowe, 
Peele,  Lodge,  and  either  Greene  and  Kyd.  Fleay, 
273,  is  of  opinion  that  about  1588-9  Marlowe  plotted, 
and  in  conjunction  with  the  playwrights  named,  wrote 
ist  Henry  VI  for  the  Queen's  men.  In  1591-2,  the 
Queen's  men  sold  the  play  with  others  to  Lord 
Strange' s  men  (with  whom  was  William  Shaksper), 
who  produced  it  in  1592,  with  the  Talbot  additions 
made  by  some  other  playwright.  He  thinks  this  other 
was  '  'Shakespeare' ' ,  but  that  is  merely  a  name  for  an 
author  unknown.  The  point  is  that  Phillipps'  claim 
to  the  popularity  of  a  newr  Shakespeare  play,  mean- 
ing a  play  written  by  his  bard,  William  Shaksper,  is 
not  supported  by  his  citation  of  Marlowe's  play  of  ist 
Henry  VI. 

Mr.  Phillipps  uses  nearly  the  same  expressions  as  to 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  "which  was  produced  at  the  Curtain 
Theater,  1596,  and  met  with  great  success.  Romeo 
and  Juliet  may  be  said  indeed  to  have  taken  the  me- 
tropolis by  storm  and  to  have  become  the  play  of  the 
season.  .  .  .  The  long  continued  popularity  of 
Romeo  and  Juliet  may  be  inferred  from  several  earlier 
allusions,  as  well  as  from  the  express  testimony  of 
Leonard  Digges."  Vol.  I,  128.  As  Digges  was 
born  in  1688,  he  was  but  eight  years  old  when  this 
play  was  "first  produced"! 

On  turning  to  Ingleby,  154,  to  see  what  Digges  really 
said  (in  his  verses  prefixed  to  the  Folio,  1623,  twenty- 


THE  THKATKRS  IN  LONDON.       163 

seven  years  after  Romeo  and  Juliet  was  first  produced, ) 
we  find  simply  these  words: 

"Nor  shall  I  e'er  believe  or  think  thee  dead 
(Though  mist)  until  our  bankrout  stage  be  sped 
(Impossible)  with  some  new  strain  to  out-do 
Passions  of  Juliet  and  her  Romeo". 

There  is  not  another  line  in  Phillipps  which  shows 
that  Romeo  and  Juliet  was  played  after  this  first  pro- 
duction, and  even  that  production  seems  a  mere 
inference  from  something  quoted  from  Marston's 
"Scourge  of  Villanie",  1598.  One  of  the  characters 
is  made  to  say: 

"Luscus  what's  played  to-day?  faith  now  I  know 
I  set  thy  lips  abroach,  from  whence  doth  flow 
Naught  but  pure  Juliet  and  Romeo." 

Marston  used  the  expression  "Curtaine  plaudeties" 
in  this  connection,  which  as  appears  from  Phillipps,  I, 
366,  may  have  meant  the  play-house,  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  may  have  been  meant  for  theatrical.  Then 
Phillipps  goes  on:  "7f  the  supposition  that  Marston 
speaks  of  the  Curtain  theater  is  correct,  it  is  certain  that 
Shakespeare's  tragedy  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  was  there 
plaid  publiquely  by  the  Right  Honorable  the  I,,  of 
Hunsdon  his  servants,  title  page  of  edition  1597.  .  .  . 
//  may  be  then  safely  assumed  that  Shakespeare's  Romeo 
and  Juliet  was  acted  at  the  Curtain  theater  some  time 
between  July  22,  1596,  the  day  on  which  Lord  Hunsdon 
died,  and  April  17,  1597,  when  his  son  was  appointed 
to  the  office  of  Privy  Council  Register.  During  those 
nine  months  the  company  was  known  as  L,ord  Huns- 


164  SHAKSPKR   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

don's".     The  above  is  an  excellent  example  of  Mr. 
Phillipps'  logic. 

''The  first  production"  spoken  of,  on  p.  128,  seems 
to  be  the  same  as  that  on  p.  366.  Phillipps  nowhere 
else  speaks  of  any  performance,  though,  I,  405,  he 
quotes  the  title  page  of  the  edition  of  1597:  "An  ex- 
cellent conceited  tragedie  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  as  it' 
hath  been  often  (with  great  applause)  plaid  pub- 
liquely",  etc.,  as  I  have  before  given  it.  The  title 
page  of  the  2d  Quarto,  1599,  says:  "Newly  corrected, 
augmented,  and  amended;  as  it  hath  beue  sundry  times 
publiquely  acted  by  the  right  H.  the  Iy.  Chamberlain's 
servants."  Nowhere  is  there  direct  evidence  that 
this  play  was  performed  at  one  of  the  public  theaters; 
and,  as  I  have  elsewhere  shown,  it  was  impossible 
that  a  Shakespeare  play  could  have  been  so  performed, 
except  greatly  abbreviated. 

On  looking  up  the  "several  early  allusions",  spoken 
of  by  Phillipps,  they  are  limited  to  this  one  of  Mars- 
ton's,  and  Weever's  mention  by  name  of  the  issue  of 
"honie-tongued  Shakespeare",  in  his  Epigrams  of 
1595,  where  the  compound  word  "Romea-Richard" 
appears,  and  nothing  else.  There  is  no  such  play  as 
Romea- Richard,  and  what  the  first  part  of  the  name 
means  is  not  apparent.  If,  in  1595,  there  was  a  play 
known  as  Romea,  meaning  Romeo,  then  its  first  pro- 
duction would  not  seem  to  have  been  in  1596,  and 
Romeo  must  have  been  the  older  play  spoken  of  by 
Fleay.  On  the  strength  of  these  two  trivial,  and  one 
of  them  doubtful,  allusions,  away  goes  Phillipps,  dis- 
coursing of  '  'the  long  continued  popularity  of  Romeo 
and  Juliet";  and  of  its  "taking  the  metropolis  by 


THK  THEATERS   IN  tONDON.  165 

storm";  "the  success  of  the  season";  an  excellent 
example  of  his  habit  when  he  fires  up  on  the  subject 
of  "the  bard  of  our  admiration",  or  "the  great  drama- 
tist", always  meaning  the  strolling  player,  William 
Shaksper.  Every  testimony  to  the  popularity  of  a 
Shakespeare  play  will  be  found  to  peter  out  in  like 
fashion.  One  remark  further  from  Phillipps  on  this 
play  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  I  must  give  (I,  128):  "But 
it  is  rather  singular  that  the  author's  name  is  not 
mentioned  in  any  of  the  old  editions,  until  some  time 
after  the  year  1609."  On  this  I  quote  T.  W.  White, 
127:  "Some  time  after  1609,  a  fourth  quarto  edition 
(of  Romeo  and  Juliet)  was  published  without  any 
date,  but  with  the  name  of  William  Shakespeare  as 
author.  But  what  happened?  After  a  few  copies 
had  been  sold,  Shakespeare's  name  was  withdrawn, 
and  the  rest  of  the  impression  was  issued  anony- 
mously. ' '  (New  Shakespeare  Soc.  II.  Daniel's  Romeo 
and  Juliet,  London,  1874,  Intro.,  IV.) 

This  play  was  never  attributed  to  William  Shake- 
speare, except  on  the  few  copies  spoken  of,  until  the 
Folio  appeared,  1623.  Mr.  White  believes  that  the 
withdrawal  of  Shakespeare's  name  on  the  title  page 
of  this  fourth  Quarto  was  caused  by  a  legal  proceeding 
had  or  threatened.* 

*  T.  W.  White  says:  "There  is  direct  evidence  that  Romeo 
and  Juliet  was  written  by  Samuel  Daniel  in  the  Pilgrimage  to 
Parnassus.  Gallic,  having  given  a  certain  passage  as  his  own, 
Ingenioso  exclaims:  'Mark!  I  think  he  will  run  through  a 
whole  book  of  Samuel  Daniel'.  If  the  words  mean  anything, 
they  mean  that  Samuel  Daniel  was  known  as  the  author  of 
Romeo  and  Juliet." 


1 66  SHAKSPKR  NOT  SHAKKSPKARE. 

Even  at  Court,  between  1589,  when  Fleay  says  the 
first  Shakespeare  play  was  given  (Love's  Labour's 
Lost),  and  1610,  when  Shaksper  retired  from  the  com- 
pany of  players,  there  were  but  88  performances  of 
any  sort  by  himself  and  associates — 88  performances 
in  twenty  years.  Some  of  the  plays  may  have  been 
Shakespeare  plays;  others  doubtless  bore  similar  names 
to  the  Shakespeare  plays,  but  were  written  by  earlier 
authors.  Others  of  the  eighty -eight,  were  by  Jonson 
and  different  playwrights.  We  know  this  because 
Mr.  Fleay  records  several  such  by  name,  as  played  be- 
fore the  Court  by  the  Chamberlain's  Company,  or  the 
King's  Company.  In  the  Appendix  to  his  book  (Life) 
is  a  list  of  all  performances  by  the  Shaksper  companies 
before  the  Court  during  the  period  named,  year  by 
year;  and  four  or  five  at  other  places,  as  Gray's  Inn, 
Somerset  House,  etc.,  etc.  Therefore,  we  are  war- 
ranted in  asserting  that  the  Shakespeare  plays  between 
1589  and  1 6 10  were  not  performed  before  the  Court  on 
an  average  of  more  than  twice  a  year. 

At  these  Court  performances  any  Shakespeare  play 
must  have  been  cut  down  to  an  hour  or  so.  As  in 
the  city  theaters,  there  was  no  movable  scenery,  and 
there  were  no  actresses.  The  fashionable  set  about 
the  Queen,  or  James,  would  soon  tire  of  the  declama- 
tions and  rantings  and  questionable  jokes  of  fellows 
that  they  held  in  the  same  consideration  as  jugglers 
and  buffoons,  and  whose  very  utterance  and  movement 
they  spent  their  wit  in  audibly  ridiculing.  ''The 
queen  patronized  the  players,  but  it  was  only  as  she 
patronized  the  bulls,  bears  and  apes,  which  were  baited 
for  her  amusement".  T.  W.  White,  283.  In  the 


THE   THEATERS   IN   LONDON.  167 

same  way  the  players  were  baited  for  her  amusement, 
to  the  delight  of  the  courtiers.  ' 

And  here  I  would  remark,  that  the  Court  seems  to 
have  appreciated  five-act  plays  and  Shakespeare  plays 
vastly  less  than  did  the  rabble  at  the  public  theaters, 
if  we  are  to  believe  what  the  commentators  tell  us. 
Interludes  and  dumb-shows  were  played  in  the  theaters 
up  to  1589,  and  the  shows  had  become  popular.  In 
steps  an  inspired  butcher  with  his  five-act  play  of 
Love's  Labour 's  Lost,  a  supreme  effort  in  genteel  com- 
edy, and  the  groundlings  are  so  enamored  with  the 
poetry  and  pictures  of  high  life  (in  southern  France, 
of  all  places  in  the  world!)  with  the  abundant  Latin 
and  French,  with  the  discourses  on  philology,  divinity, 
and  law,  that  they  cry  aloud  for  five-act  plays;  they 
cry  for  them  as  children  cry  for  castoria,  with  the  re- 
sult that,  up  to  1592,  they  get  four  more  plays  to  their 
mind — Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  The  Comedy' of 
Errors,  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  Romeo  and  Juliet — 
the  scenes  laid  in  Italy  and  Sicily  and  Asia;  Dukes, 
Princes,  Lords  and  Ladies  galore.  All  this  they  got 
because  they  cried  (conclamabant)  for  it.  Happy, 
happy  groundlings!  One  distinguished  member  of  the 
American  Shakespeare  Society  has  it  in  print  that  the 
Shakespeare  plays  are  the  direct  outcome  of  the  clamor 
of  the  galleries,  and  but  for  this,  there  would  have 
been  no  Shakespeare  plays.  Now  Symonds  tells  us 
that  the  occupants  of  the  gallery  were  the  same  sort 
as  the  stinkards  below,  plus  the  prostitutes. 

On  the  other  hand,  while  the  intellectual  and  culti- 
vated penny-knaves  were  clamoring  for  five-act  plays, 
the  unintellectual  and  uncultivated  Court,  from  1586 


1 68  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

to  1592,  was  content  with  Interludes,  Masks,  and  the 
the  gambols  of  the  Children  of  the  Revels.  Truly  the 
contrast  is  surprising !  I  remember  that  Fleay  charges 
certain  Shakespeare  commentators  with  having  mis- 
chievously fertile  imaginations,  and  also  that  an  em- 
inent authority  long  ago  left  her  opinion  that  this 
world  was  too  much  given  to  lying. 

After  1623,  when  the  reading  community  had  the 
opportunity  to  become  acquainted  with  the  whole  body 
of  Shakespeare  plays,  through  the  Folio,  these  should 
have  become  popular.  But  it  was  not  so.  Dr.  Ingle- 
by,  157,  quoting  Malone  says:  "The  office  book  of 
Sir  Henry  Herbert  contains  an  account  of  almost 
every  piece  exhibited  in  any  of  the  theaters  from 
August,  1623,  to  the  commencement  of  the  rebellion, 
1651.  By  this  it  appears  that  the  Winter's  Tale  was 
acted  at  Whitehall,  i8th  of  Jan.,  1623;  Sir  John 
Falstaff  (Henry  IV),  at  same  place,  1624;  Richard  III, 
at  St.  James,  1633;  The  Taming  of  A  Shrew,  St. 
James,  1633;  Cymbeline  (at  Court),  1633;  The  Win- 
ter's Tale,  at  Court,  1633;  and  Julius  Caesar,  at  St. 
James,  1636.  That  is  to  say,  from  the  publication  of 
the  Folio,  in  the  next  eighteen  years,  seven  repre- 
sentations of  Shakespeare  plays,  or  plays  with  titles 
similar  to  those  of  the  Shakespeare  plays — for  the 
record  never  says  "by  Shakespeare" — were  given  be- 
fore the  rank  and  fashion  of  the  land,  or  about  one 
every  three  years. 

After  the  Restoration,  we  hear  of  I^ear  and  Macbeth, 
as  altered  by  Davenant;  Troilus  and  Cressida,  as  re- 
written by  Dryden;  "The  Tempest,  made  into  an 
opera  by  Mr.  Shadwell,  having  all  new  in  it,  as  scenes, 


THEATERS   IN   LONDON.  169 

machines;  particularly  one  scene  painted  with  myriads 
of  Ariel  spirits;  and  another  flying  away  with  a  table 
furnished  out  with  fruits,  sweetmeats,  and  all  sorts  of 
viands,  just  when  Duke  Trinculo  and  his  companions 
were  going  to  dinner' ' . 

"The  Fairy  Queen:  This  is  Shakespeare's  Mid- 
summers Nights  Dream  with  additions,  songs  and 
dances,  24  Chinese,  and  Juno  in  a  machine  drawn  by 
peacocks.  While  a  symphony  plays,  the  machine 
moves  forward,  and  the  peacocks  spread  their  tails, 
etc.  I^ater  six  monkeys  come  from  behind  the  trees 
and  dance,"  etc. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  at  any  time  the  Shake- 
speare plays  as  "William  Shakespeare"  wrote  them 
were  popular,  that  is,  capable  of  rilling  the  theaters  or 
the  managers'  pockets;  and  yet,  after  the  Restoration, 
the  female  parts  were  taken  by  women,  several  of 
whom  seem  to  have  been  admirable  actresses,  and 
stage  scenery  had  been  introduced.  Other  attractions 
had  to  be  offered.  Doran  says  that  (about  1700)  "the 
theaters  had  not  proved  popular.  The  public  greeted 
acrobats  with  louder  acclaim  than  any  poet.  Dancers, 
strong  men,  and  quadrupeds  were  called  in  to  attract 
the  town."  "At  a  performance  of  Othello,  between 
the  acts,  Dutch  posture-masters  kept  the  audience  in 
good  humor". 

Ingleby  goes  on  to  say:  "But  Sir  Henry  Herbert 
left  several  other  papers,  from  which  Malone  gives  us 
the  following  notices  of  Shakespeare  plays.  Out  of 
the  twenty  stock  plays  of  the  Red  Bull  actors,  after- 
wards called  the  King's  servants,  from  1660  to  1663, 
three  were  Shakespeare's.  Out  of  a  list  of  67  entered 


170  SHAKSPKS.  NOT 

by  Sir  Henry  Herbert,  from  5  March,  1660,  to  July 
23d,  1662,  only  three  were  Shakespeare's.  Downes, 
the  prompter's,  list  of  the  stock  plays  of  the  King's 
servants  from  1660  to  1682,  gives  only  four  of  Shake- 
speare's. Davenant's  company  acted  some  of  Shake- 
speare's, part  of  which  had  been  altered.  The  notes 
for  the  next  thirty  years  show  us  ten  of  Shakespeare's 
own,  and  ten  altered  by  various  writers,  which  were 
performed  before  1692".  The  public  quickly  forgot 
Shakespeare  and  accepted  Davenant,  and  Dry  den, 
Tate,  Durfey,  Gibber,  and  John  Philip  Kemble,  as 
something  better  than  the  original,  and  even  then,  one 
of  these  plays  was  seldom  performed. 

The  summing  up  of  the  matter  is  this:  William 
Shaksper  belonged  to  a  company  of  players  which  was 
called  in  successive  periods  by  several  names  —  at 
length,  after  1603,  the  King's  players.  It  was  their 
duty  to  amuse  the  Court  when  ordered  so  to  do.  This 
Company,  under  one  name  or  other,  had  occupied 
three  public  theaters,  the  then  lowest  place  of  public 
entertainment;  first,  the  Theater;  next,  the  Curtain; 
and,  finally,  the  Globe;  and  they  played  in  no  other 
theaters.  They  were  in  the  habit  of  giving  perform- 
ances in  the  open  air  anywhere  about  town  where  a 
crowd  could  be  collected,  just  as  tumblers  and  jugglers 
perform  now  in  I^ondon  streets.  Sometimes  they 
played  on  an  extemporized  platform — '  'boards  and 
barrel  heads" — in  the  open  court  or  yard  of  one  of  the 
London  Inns.  The  larger  part  of  the  year  they 
strolled  up  and  down  England  and  Scotland  divided 
into  small  squads,  and  played  at  fairs  or  wherever  they 
happened  to  be. 


THE  THEATERS  IN   LONDON.  17! 

There  is  no  possibility  that  any  Shakespeare  play 
was  ever  acted  at  length  while  the  detachments  were 
thus  strolling;  *  a  separate  scene  might  have  been,  but 
as  to  whether  even  that  was  given  there  is  no  informa- 
tion. There  is  no  evidence  or  probability  that  any 
Shakespeare  play  was  ever  acted  at  a  public  theater, 
except  in  a  very  brief  form,  a  mere  skeleton,  or  inter- 
lude, or  in  dumb-show.  The  nature  of  the  public 
theater  prohibited  anything  beyond  this.  There  is  no 
evidence  whatever  that  a  Shakespeare  play  was  ever 
acted  by  William  Shaksper's  Company,  or  any  other 
Company,  at  a  private  theater.  There  is  a  record  of 
four  or  five  performances  of  some  sort  of  play  at  the 
Karl  of  Pembroke's,  Gray's  Inn,  or  the  like,  in  the 
years  during  which  William  Shaksper  was  a  player  or 
manager  (Rowland  White,  in  one  of  his  letters  given 
in  the  Sydney  Memoirs,  II,  91,  says  that  on  14  Febru- 
ary, 1898,  there  was  a  grand  entertainment  given  at 
the  Essex  House.  "They  had  two  plays,  which  kept 
them  up  till  one  o'clock  after  midnight");  and  of  an 
average  of  about  two  and  a  half  performances  per 

*  Fleay,  Life,  229,  says:  "On  the  title-page  of  the  ist  Quarto 
(Hamlet,  1603),  it  is  said  that  the  play  has  been  acted  in  the 
Universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and  elsewhere.  .  .  . 
Hamlet  was  entered  by  Roberts,  26  July,  1602,  in  S.  R.,  'as  it 
was  lately  acted'.  Plays  thus  produced  during  travels  were 
hurried  and  careless  performances;  indeed,  this  form  of  Hamlet 
seems  to  have  been  an  unfinished  refashioning  of  the  old  play 
by  Kyd  that  had  long  been  performed  by  the  Chamberlain's 
men."  On  page  233,  Fleay  speaks  of  this  ist  Quarto  as  "  a  hur- 
ried revision  of  the  work  of  an  earlier  writer,  but  it  must  be 
remembered,  in  a  most  mutilated  form."  This  "most  mutilated 
form"  would  be  "as  it  was  acted",  etc. 


172        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKKSPEARE. 

year  at  Court  during  the  same  period.  There  is  no 
reason  for  believing  that  even  at  Court  any  Shakespeare 
play  was  ever  acted  at  length,  or  otherwise  than  in  a 
very  much  abbreviated  form;  and,  indeed,  we  are  ex- 
pressly told  this  was  the  case. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  these  plays  were  any- 
where popular,  either  among  cultivated  people  or  the 
rabble,  the  "groundlings"  of  Hamlet,  the  "penny- 
knaves"  as  Ingleby  calls  them,  the  "stinkards"  of 
Symonds,  who  flocked  to  the  Globe,  though  certain 
scenes  of  them  were  very  probably  popular,  such  as, 
from  their  brutality,  carnage  or  ribaldry,  were  on  a 
moral  level  with  that  audience. 

I  shall  in  due  time  show  (Chaps.  XI,  XII),  that 
during  the  period  from  1589  to  1623,  these  plays  were 
wholly  unappreciated  even  by  the  better  class  of  peo- 
ple, by  the  educated,  and  that  they  were  regarded  as 
in  no  whit  superior  to  the  plays  written  by  a  score  of 
other  authors. 

Finally,  the  assertion  that  they  were  written  to  fill 
the  public  theaters  and  the  pockets  of  William  Shaksper, 
their  alleged  author,  through  the  money  they  brought 
to  the  theater,  is  unwarranted.  As  I  have  said  before, 
a  course  of  Shakespeare  plays  would  have  bankrupted 
any  theater.  No  audience  would  have  sat  them  out, 
and  the  pit  at  the  Curtain  or  the  Globe  would  have 
pelted  the  players,  or  given  them  a  hiding,  had  such 
a  thing  been  attempted  by  the  managers. 

Now  that  we  have  seen  what  the  theater  was,  and 
what  the  audience,  and  what  sort  of  men  those  licensed 
vagabonds  must  have  been,  we  can  judge  of  the  proba- 
bility of  the  most  poetical  head  in  England,  "the 


THE  THEATERS  IN  LONDON.          173 

greatest  poet  of  the  modern  world",  as  Professor 
Symonds  styles  him,  the  "fullest  head  of  which  we 
have  any  record",  according  to  James  Russell  Lowell, 
the  ' '  myriad-minded ' '  author  of  the  Shakespeare 
plays,  as  Coleridge  calls  him,  taking  up  his  abode  and 
remaining  for  twenty-five  years  with  that  disgusting 
crowd.  William  Shaksper  could  and  did  do  that 
thing,  but  the  author  of  the  immortal  plays  could  not 
have  done  it,  and  he  did  not  do  it.  Can  any  one  im- 
agine a  heaven-born  poet  deliberately  taking  up  his 
abode,  and  contentedly  living  the  remainder  of  his 
days,  with  Snug  the  joiner,  Bottom  the  weaver,  and 
Snout  the  tinker  ? — and  those  particular  worthies  were 
not  tainted  with  every  vice,  we  have  reason  to  believe. 
"Acting"  is  not  the  word  to  describe  the  beggarly 
performances  given  by  the  Curtain  company,  or  the 
Globe  company,  either  at  the  Theater  or  on  the  tramp. 
They  were  players,  not  actors.  Jonson  intimates  that 
their  proper  place  was  at  Goose  Fair,  and  he  hints 
broadly  at  the  character  of  the  prevalent  vices  among 
them.  Wendell  takes  pains  to  tell  us  that  the  theater 
was  not  a  socially  respectable  place, — that  it  was  the 
center  of  organized  vice.  And  the  quotations  I  have 
given  from  Phillipps  and  Symonds  bear  him  out. 

William  Shaksper,  ex-butcher  and  poacher,  escaped 
to  London,  under  the  law  that  birds  of  a  feather  flock 
together,  would  naturally  find  his  fellows  at  the  public 
theater,  and  could  lose  no  caste  by  it.  But  it  is 
utterly  impossible  that  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare 
plays,  an  educated  and  learned  man,  as  well  as  a  gen- 
tleman, of  which  the  plays  themselves  give  evidence, 
could  have  sunk  into  that  unclean  nest,  and  volun- 


174  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

tarily  have  spent  his  life  among  pimps  and  panders,  or 
strolling  about  the  land  "with  a  blind  jade  and  a 
hamper",  cutting  his  Jim  Crow  antics,  in  inn-yards, 
on  boards  and  barrel-heads. 

Kven  as  a  player,  William  Shaksper  was  a  failure. 
Burbage,  and  Alleyn,  and  Kempe,  his  associates,  left 
some  sort  of  a  reputation  to  the  next  age,  but  of 
Shaksper  there  is  nothing.  According  to  Rowe,  "the 
top  of  his  performance  was  the  Ghost  in  his  own 
Hamlet.  There  is  some  ground  for  thinking' '  (indefi- 
nite knowledge  is  definite  ignorance)  "that  he  played 
the  part  of  Knowell  in  Jonson's  Every  Man  in  his 
Humour";  and  there  is  a  confused  tradition  handed 
down  by  William  Oldys  (1696-1761),  antiquarian, 
which  makes  it  probable  that  he  was  the  Adam  of  "As 
You  lyike  It".  Dowden,  19.  R.  G.  White  says, 
Appleton's  Knc.  "Shakespeare":  "We  are  tolerably 
well  informed  by  contemporary  writers  of  the  per- 
formances of  the  eminent  actors  of  that  time,  but 
of  Shakespeare  (Shaksper)  we  read  nothing."  A 
strange  fact!  No  end  of  evidence  of  Shaksper 's  money 
transactions,  but  nothing  of  him  as  a  player — the  occu- 
pation in  which  he  spent  the  best  half  of  his  life,  in 
contemporary  annals.  The  truth  unquestionably  is 
that  to  his  contemporaries  he  was  known  simply  as 
proprietor  of  a  theater,  and  as  a  trader  and  money 
lender. 

Oldys  says  that  one  of  William's  younger  brothers, 
whom  he  calls  Charles,  and  who  lived  to  a  great  age, 
when  questioned  in  his  later  years,  said  that  he  could 
remember  nothing  of  William's  performances,  but  see- 
ing him  act  a  part  in  one  of  his  own  comedies,  wherein, 


THE   THEATERS   IN   LONDON.  175 

to  personate  a  decrepit  old  man,  he  wore  a  long  beard, 
and  appeared  so  weak  and  drooping,  and  unable  to 
walk  that  he  was  forced  to  be  supported,  and  carried 
to  a  table,  at  which  he  was  seated  among  some  com- 
pany and  one  of  them  sang  a  song. ' '  This  is  circum- 
stantial enough,  and  indicates  no  loss  of  memory  on 
the  part  of  the  venerable  brother.  The  wonder  is,  if 
he  could  remember  so  much,  and  so  minutely,  that  he 
could  not  have  remembered  more.  Unfortunately, 
William  did  not  have  any  such  older  brother,  or  any 
brother  Charles,  and  that  forgery  goes  with  the  many 
others.  Fleay  tells  us,  170,  (H.-P.  I,  238),  "that  on 
the  4th  Feby.,  1613,  the  poet's  only  surviving  brother, 
Richard,  was  buried  at  Stratford."  His  memory  as  a 
player  then  rests  only  on  what  Rowe  tells  us,  but  if  there 
is  only  some  reason  for  thinking  he  played  the  part  of 
old  Knowell,  there  is  as  much  reason  for  believing  he 
did  not.  Evidently,  William  Shaksper  played  inferior 
parts,  such  as  would  not  impress  the  spectators.  He 
was  not  known  to  his  contemporaries  therefore  as  a 
player,  nor  as  a  writer  of  plays,  but  he  had  a  reputa- 
tion which  has  reached  our  day  as  a  jack-at-all- trades, 
a  manager  of  a  strolling  company,  and  as  proprietor 
of  a  public  theater — the  lowest,  nastiest,  place  of 
entertainment.  But  always  he  was  known  as  a 
man  who  had  money  to  loan — for  a  sufficient  consid- 
eration. 

And  now  we  can  understand  why  William  Shaksper, 
player,  manager,  and  part  proprietor  of  the  Globe, 
was  unknown  to  the  men  of  that  age;  that  there  is  no 
mention  of  him  in  any  letter,  save  in  one  instance 
where  a  Stratford  neighbor  writes  to  him  for  a  loan  of 


1 76        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

money;  or  diary  of  that  age,  save  one  entry  in  Man- 
iiingham's  diary,  (which  makes  him  party  to  a  dis- 
creditable amour) ;  that  there  is  no  testimony  to  con- 
nect him  with  writing  any  sort  of  play;  and  there  is 
not  a  tittle  of  evidence  that  any  man  or  woman  of 
mark,  or  any  gentleman  or  lady,  ever  spoke  to  him. 


WILLIAM  SHAKSPKR'S  THIRST  FOR  WEALTH.    177 
CHAPTER  VIII. 

WILLIAM  SHAKSPER'S  THIRST  FOR  WEALTH. 

When  I  say  there  are  few  mentions  of  the  man 
Shaksper,  I  mean  as  connected  with  the  theater. 
There  are  many  in  other  avocations,  as  buying  and 
selling,  investing  money  at  Stratford  and  elsewhere, 
loaning  money,  and  prosecuting  debtors.  In  1598, 
Adrian  Quiney  writes  to  him  in  London  about  money, 
and  this  is  the  only  letter  to-day  extant  addressed  to 
the  player.  "The  fact  is  somewhat  startling  in  the 
life  of  a  great  poet  that  the  only  letter  addressed  to 
Shakespeare  (Shaksper),  which  is  known  to  exist,  is 
one  which  asks  for  a  loan  of  money".  R.  G.  White, 
Life  and  Genius,  123.  Very  significant  as  well  as 
startling,  I  should  say! 

"He  appears  not  only  as  an  advancer  of  money,  but 
also  one  who  negotiates  loans  through  other  capital- 
ists". H.-P.,  I,  164.  From  the  beginning  of  his 
career  in  London  money  was  the  object  of  his  heart, 
and  as  Rowe  tell  us,  "by  his  incessant  attention  to 
business' '  he  attained  it  in  an  unusually  large  degree. 
Wendell,  433,  says:  "The  son  of  a  ruined  tradesman, 
and  saddled  with  a  wife  and  three  children,  his  busi- 
ness at  23  was  to  so  conduct  his  life  that  he  might  end 
it  not  as  a  laborer,  but  as  a  gentleman.  After  five- 
and-twenty  years  of  steady  work,  this  end  had  been 
accomplished."  Incessant  attention  to  business,  and 
twenty-five  years  of  steady  work  in  a  player's  life, 


178  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESP^ARK. 

would  seem  to  leave  little  time  for  anything  outside  of 
business.  There  are  unreflecting  persons  who  suppose 
William  Shaksper  was  coining  money  by  the  Shake- 
speare plays,  instead  of  by  trading,  buying  and  selling 
real  estate  in  I^ondon,  Stratford,  and  many  other 
places;  loaning  his  money  at  usurious  interest,  as  the 
books  plainly  intimate;  by  farming  and  brewing  beer. 
R.  G.  White  says,  Shakespeare  Studies,  209:  ''The 
point  to  be  constantly  kept  in  mind  in  the  critical  con- 
sideration of  Shakespeare's  dramas  is,  that  they  wrere 
written  by  a  second-rate  actor  (player  Shaksper) 
whose  first  object  was  money,  to  get  on  in  life.  He 
wrote  what  he  wrote  merely  to  fill  the  theater  and  his 
own  pockets".  I  think  I  have  made  it  clear  that  had 
this  man  written  the  Shakespeare  plays  in  order  to  fill 
the  Theater,  or  Curtain,  or  Globe,  the  only  theaters 
with  which  he  was  connected,  he  would  have  emptied 
instead  of  filled  his  owrn  pockets.  That  theory  may  as 
well  be  dismissed.  He  did  not  write  the  Shakespeare 
plays,  and  his  aim  in  life  being  what  it  was,  he  could 
not  have  written  them,  even  if  he  had  had  the  ability 
to  do  it.  The  passion  for  money-making  is  antago- 
nistic to  the  passion  for  study.  The  two  cannot 
exist  in  the  same  mind.  A  man  may  become 
rich  as  a  result  of  his  passion  for  literature,  but  he 
cannot  become  learned  by  study,  or  distinguished  in 
literature,  when  money-making  has  been  his  first  ob- 
ject. There  is  no  pretense  that  Shaksper  had  a 
passion  for  literature,  or  cared  one  stiver  for  it.  "He 
wrote  merely  to  fill  his  own  pockets' ' .  Then  he  never 
wrote  the  Shakespeare  plays.  He  had  an  enormous 
capacity  for  getting  money,  else  he  would  not  have 


SHAKSPER'S  THIRST  FOR  WEAI/TH.   179 

accumulated  a  property  that  yielded  an  income  equiva- 
lent \o  twenty-five  thousand  dollars  to-day.  His  one 
feat  was  getting  money;  there  is  nothing  else.  He 
saved  his  earnings  from  his  first  months  in  London; 
even  as  a  horse  boy,  he  employed  other  boys  to  work  for 
him,  and  so  gained  money.  He  invested  in  any  good 
thing  that  came  to  hand,  executed  commissions,  ne- 
gotiated loans  with  other  capitalists,  Phillips  says. 
By  and  by  he  bought  a  share  in  a  theater,  which 
proved  a  very  profitable  investment;  bought  houses 
and  lots  in  London,  houses  and  lands  in  Stratford, 
farms  here  and  there;  was  always  trading,  even  to  the 
buying  and  selling  of  agricultural  products;  was  en- 
gaged in  the  making  and  sale  of  malt;  buys  for  ,£440 
"the  unexpired  term  of  the  moiety  of  a  valuable  lease 
of  the  tithes  of  four  parishes,  to  wit:  Stratford,  Old 
Stratford,  Bishopton,  and  Welcombe."  H.-P.,  I,  214. 
And  all  the  while  he  was  loaning  money  at  a  high  rate 
of  interest.  Everything  turned  to  money  in  this  man's 
hands.  He  had  a  wife  and  children  at  Stratford,  but 
he  left  them  to  shift  for  themselves.  His  father  all 
the  last  part  of  his  life  was  in  distress  for  money,  but 
the  son  for  years  wasted  nothing  on  him.  A  very 
saving  man  this!  He  showed  himself  an  unusually 
capable  business  man.  Some  of  his  admirers  have 
been  unable  to  see  how  he  could  have  become  rich 
without  the  apochryphal  aid  from  Lord  Southampton, 
told  about  by  Rowe,at  the  beginning  of  the  1 8th  century. 
According  to  Rowe,  "there  is  one  instance  so  singular 
in  the  magnificence  of  this  patron  of  Shakespeare's 
that  if  I  had  not  been  assured  that  the  story  was 
handed  down  by  Sir  William  D'Avenant,  who  was 


180  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKKSPKARE. 

probably  very  well  acquainted  with  his  affairs,  I  should 
not  have  ventured  to  have  inserted;  that  my  I^ord 
Southampton  at  one  time  gave  him  a  thousand  pounds 
to  enable  him  to  go  through  with  a  purchase  which  he 
heard  he  had  a  mind  to";  and  H.-P.,  I,  147,  thinks 
this  purchase  must  have  been  New  Place,  in  1597;  and 
yet  he  tells  us,  p.  131,  that  this  property  cost  Shak- 
sper  but  ^60.  As  early  as  1603,  Crosse,  in  Phillipps' 
opinion,  referred  to  Shaksper,  when  he  spoke  of 
"these  copper-laced  gentlemen  (who)  grow  rich,  pur- 
chase lands  by  adulterous  plays,  and  not  a  few  of 
them  usurers  and  extortioners",  etc. 

In  1602,  he  had  bought  107  acres  of  land  near 
Stratford.  Plainly,  he  commanded  money  early  in  his 
lyondon  career,  and  there  was  no  need  of  Southamp- 
ton's interposing  as  a  deus  ex  machina.  D'Avenant 
gave  out  that  he  was  a  natural  son  of  Shaksper,  and 
was  a  braggart  as  well  as  a  blackguard,  defiling 
the  name  as  well  as  the  fame  of  his  own  mother. 
(Both  Phillipps  and  Fleay  assert  that  there  was  not 
the  least  ground  for  the  scandalous  story. )  Naturally 
he  would  make  the  most  of  the  Southampton  chest- 
nut, testifying  to  the  grand  society  the  rich  manager 
mixed  in.  One  thousand  pounds  in  1596  was  equal  to 
$50,000  to-day.  Elizabeth's  dissipated  nobles  had  no 
Golconda  behind  them;  nor  Pennsylvania  oil-wells, 
nor  Kaffir  circles,  nor  Klondikes,  to  fill  their  purses, 
and  did  not  play  at  chuck  farthing  with  thousands  of 
pounds.  If  William  Shaksper  had  been  the  recipient 
of  so  princely  a  gift,  all  the  town  would  have  rung 
with  it.  These  things  are  not  done  in  a  corner. 
There  would  have  been  comments  on  it  to  suit  In- 


SHAKSPER' s  THIRST  FOR  WKALTH.   181 

gleby's  book,  record  of  it  in  the  accounts  or  papers  of 
the  Earl  of  Southampton,  mentions  of  it  in  the  written 
gossip  of  the  day.  There  is  not  merely  a  total  absence 
of  anything  of  the  kind,  but  a  notable  lack  of  mention 
of  a  connection  of  any  sort  between  Shaksper  and 
Southampton. 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  who  was  obliged  to  make  a  case 
to  fit  the  personality  of  William  Shaksper,  says,  I. 
113:  "It  should  be  remembered  that  his  dramas  were 
not  written  for  posterity,  but  as  a  matter  of  business 

.  .  .  his  task  having  been  to  construct  out  of 
certain  given  or  selected  materials  successful  dramas 
for  the  audiences  of  the  day. ' ' 

The  task  of  manager  Shaksper,  as  well  as  of  all 
managers  of  that  day,  was  not  '  "to  construct  successful 
dramas",  but  to  find  what  would  suit  his  or  their  au- 
diences from  whatever  sources  they  were  able,  and 
doubtless  Shaksper  catered  to  an  approving  audience. 
But  the  Shakespeare  plays  were  written  with  no  such 
aim  as  Mr.  Phillipps  lays  claim  to.  They  were  written 
for  posterity,  and  not  for  the  audiences  of  Elizabeth 
or  James,  and  not  merely  to  fill  the  authors'  pockets, 
and  the  theaters,  public  or  private.  As  Goethe  said, 
Shakespeare  never  thought  of  the  stage.  Had  money 
been  the  aim  the  author  of  these  plays  would  have 
gained  but  a  pittance  either  by  their  sale*  to  the 
theater,  or  a  royalty  on  their  performance.  They 
were  not  popular,  they  were  beyond  the  understand- 
ing of  the  people,  and  appreciation  of  them  was  very 
slow  even  among  the  reading  and  educated  classes.  It 

*  From  Henslowe's  Diary  we  learn  that  the  price  paid  by  the 
theater  to  the  author  for  a  play  varied  from  £2 


1 82  SHAKSPKR   NOT 

is  one  of  the  unexplained  mysteries  that  no  one  seems 
to  have  had  or  exercised  any  ownership  of  these  plays. 
Apparently  any  printer  was  at  liberty  to  use  them  as 
he  pleased.  There  is  no  evidence  that  any  one  ever 
received  one  penny  of  royalty  on  them  or  any  of  them. 
They  were,  so  far  as  appears,  cast  on  the  waters,  and 
certainly  it  was  not  till  many  days  after  that  they  bore 
fruit. 

"The  constant  thirst  that  he  had  for  wealth  is  ex- 
hibited by  his  early  acquisition  of  houses  and  lands  in 
L,ondon  and  at  Stratford;  and  the  firmness  of  his  grip 
on  his  accumulations  is  manifested  by  the  paltry  suits 
he  brought  to  recover  debts — one  being  for  thirty-five 
shillings  and  tenpence — after  he  had  come  to  the  en- 
joyment of  an  income  which  would  now  be  equal  to 
twenty  thousand  dollars  a  year."  Wilkes',  "Shake- 
speare' ' . 

He  carried  on  the  business  of  money  lending  both 
in  L,ondon  and  at  Stratford.  The  records  of  the  courts 
in  both  places  show  that  he  sued  his  debtors,  and  got 
judgment  against  them.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the 
suits  are  always  for  small  sums.  He  prosecuted 
Philip  Rogers,  a  Stratford  neighbor,  for  J  1.15, 6,  due 
for  malt  sold,  and  two  shillings  money  loaned;  another, 
John  Addenbroke,  for  ^6.  for  malt.  Follows  this  last 
suit  for  a  couple  of  years  until  he  gets  the  defendant 
into  prison,  whence  he  is  bailed  by  Horneby.  The 
legal  proceedings  are  given  in  full  by  Phillipps  in  both 
these  cases.  Shaksper  keeps  a  lawyer,  one  Thomas 
Greene,  in  his  house,  (teste  Phillipps),  and  his  name 
is  appended  to  each  of  the  processes  in  the  Addenbroke 
suit. 


WILLIAM  SHAKSPER'S  THIRST  FOR  WEAI/TH.   183 

It  is  pleasant  to  know  that  Addenbroke  ran  away 
and  escaped  his  tormentor,  who  however  then  com- 
menced operations  on  Horneby.  R.  G.  White  says: 
"These  stories  grate  upon  my  feelings.  .  .  .  The 
pursuit  of  an  impoverished  man  for  the  sake  of  im- 
prisoning him,  and  depriving  him  both  of  the  power 
of  paying  his  debts,  and  supporting  himself  and  his 
family,  is  an  instance  in  Shakspere's  life  which  it 
requires  the  utmost  allowance  and  consideration  for 
the  practice  of  the  time  and  country  to  enable  us  to 
contemplate  with  equanimity — satisfaction  is  impossi- 
ble". 

Is  it  probable  that  this  man  was  the  Shakespeare  of 
whom  Dr.  Drake  wrote:  "No  person  can  study  his 
writings  without  perceiving  that  throughout  the  vast 
range  of  being,  whatever  is  lovely  and  harmonious, 
whatever  is  sweet  in  expression,  or  graceful  in  propor- 
tion, was  constantly  present  to  his  mind"?  Could 
that  have  been  the  persecutor  of  poor  debtors,  the 
man  who  kept  a  lawyer  in  his  house,  the  rich  player 
and  theater-proprietor  who  brought  up  his  daughters 
in  ignorance,  who  neglected  his  distressed  father,  and 
forgot  his  wife  when  he  came  to  make  his  Will? 
Drake  had  some  other  man  in  his  mind,  I  think. 
Halliwell-Phillipps  says:  "Until  this  date  (1613),  the 
personal  notices  of  Shaksper  which  remain  to  us  ex- 
hibit him  as  being  very  attentive  to  matters  of  busi- 
ness, rapidly  growing  in  estate,  purchasing  farms, 
houses,  and  tithes  in  Stratford,  bringing  suits  for 
small  sums  against  various  persons  for  malt  delivered, 
money  loaned,  and  the  like;  carrying  on  agricultural 
pursuits  and  other  kinds  of  traffic,  and  executing 


1 84        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

commissions  in  L,ondon  for  his  Stratford  neighbors. 
The  best  evidence  we  can  produce  exhibits  him  pay- 
ing more  regard  to  his  solid  affairs  than  to  his  pro- 
fession. ' ' 

''The  four  years  and  a  half  that  intervened  between 
the  performance  of  the  Tempest"  (at  Blackfriars  the- 
ater, with  which  William  Shaksper  had  no  concern), 
"in  1611,  and  the  author's  death  (1616),  could  not 
have  been  one  of  his  periods  of  great  literary  activity. 
So  many  of  his  plays  are  known  to  have  been  in  exist- 
ence at  the  former  date,  it  follows  that  there  are  only 
six  which  could  by  any  possibility  have  been  written 
after  that  time,  and  it  is  not  likely  that  the  whole  of 
those  belong  to  so  late  an  era.  These  facts  lead  irre- 
sistibly to  the  conclusion  that  the  poet  (Shaksper) 
abandoned  literary  occupation  a  considerable  period 
before  his  decease,  and  in  all  probability,  when  he 
disposed  of  his  theatrical  property."  H.-P.,  I,  232. 

Fleay,  67,  considers  Shaksper's  "retirement  from 
the  stage  in  1610  nearly  a  certainty ".  There  is  no 
tradition  in  the  twenty-five  years  of  his  life  in  lyondon 
and  the  provinces,  and  the  five  or  six  in  Stratford 
after  his  retirement,  that  he  ever  studied  one  hour, 
and  being  the  kind  of  man  he  was,  leading  the  life  he 
led,  he  could  by  no  possibility  have  studied  anywhere 
or  at  any  time.  The  life  of  a  strolling  player,  and 
according  to  Halliwell-Phillipps,  he  led  that  life  from 
the  start,  and  nearly  to  the  end  of  his  connection  with 
the  theater,  was  antagonistic  to  study,  even  were  there 
any  inclination;  while  all  the  facts  go  to  show  there 
was  no  inclination. 

If  the  player  acquired  the  learning  necessary,  as  he 


WILLIAM  SHAKSPER'S  THIRST  FOR  WEALTH.  185 

strolled  about  the  country,  and  wrote  these  plays  on 
the  tramp,  (a  proposition  too  absurd  for  consideration, 
one  would  think,  but  which  nevertheless  seems  to  be 
confidently  entertained  by  many  Shaksperolators), 
spending  the  night  in  his  cart,  or  the  next  barn,  how 
many  vans  must  have  followed  the  much-studying 
man,  bearing  the  ponderous  tomes  ("the  ponderous 
folios  so  dear  to  the  XVI  century"  Walter  Scott),  to 
be  mastered  and  consulted.  Nearly  all  of  the  learning 
of  that  day  had  to  be  drawn  from  original  sources,  for 
there  were  no  compendiums ',  no  encyclopedias ',  and  almost 
no  translations.  If  the  tomes  were  carried,  and  the 
player  sat  up  of  nights  exploring  them,  composing  the 
plays,  and  writing  them  out  in  his  peculiar  hiero- 
glyphics, what  became  of  the  vast  accumulations  of 
books  and  manuscript;  who  interpreted  the  scrawls 
and  transcribed  them,  and  where  are  the  interpreter's 
testimonies,  and  the  traditions  of  him  and  them? 

Afterwards,  at  Stratford,  in  his  retirement,  accord- 
ing to  Knight,  but  not  according  to  Phillipps,  he  wrote 
plays  that  '  'were  the  result  of  profound  study  of  the 
whole  range  of  Roman  history  including  the  nice 
details  of  Roman  manners".  The  Greek  plays  show 
exactly  the  same  profound  study  of  Greek  history 
and  manners.  Where  were  the  books  and  proofs  of 
this  assertion?  There  was  not  a  book  in  William 
Shaksper's  house  at  his  death.  As  I  write,  an  item  is 
running  through  the  newspapers  to  the  effect  that  Dr. 
A.  Conan  Doyle  states,  in  one  of  his  lectures,  that  it 
took  one  year  and  a  half  hard  reading  of  i ,  500  books 
before  he  was  well  enough  posted  in  the  subject  to 
write  it  out.  And  another  writer  of  a  popular  romance 


1 86        SHAKSPKR  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

tells  us  that  before  she  wrote  it,  she  read  a  hundred 
and  fifty  books  to  get  the  necessary  history.  Yet  as 
much  reading  and  as  much  study  must  have  been  re- 
quired to  enable  the  author  of  any  one  of  twenty  of 
the  Shakespeare  plays  to  write  it,  as  it  cost  these  recent 
authors  to  write  their  romances,  and  his  difficulties 
were  immeasurably  greater  than  theirs.  A  trifle  that 
the  apologists  of  the  Stratford  man  have  failed  to 
note. 

'  'There  is  preserved  in  the  College  of  Arms  the  draft 
of  a  grant  for  coat-armour  to  John  Shakespere,  dated 
1596.  It  may  be  safely  inferred  from  the  unprosperous 
circumstances  of  the  grantee,  that  this  attempt  to  con- 
fer gentility  on  the  family  was  made  at  the  poet's  ex- 
pense." H.-P.  I,  130.  The  player's  profession  pre- 
vented any  hope  of  having  a  grant  of  this  kind  made 
directly  to  himself.  In  former  times,  only  the  sover- 
eign could  make  a  gentleman,  but  before  Elizabeth's 
day,  the  herald  king-at-arms  had  obtained  the  right. 
"In  our  days,"  says  an  old  writer,  "all  are  accounted 
gentlemen  that  have  money,  and  if  he  has  no  coat-of- 
arms,  the  king-at-arms  can  sell  him  one."  "It  ap- 
pears that  Sir  William  Dethick,  garter  king-at-arms, 
in  1596  and  1599,  was  subsequently  called  to  account 
for  having  granted  coats  to  persons  whose  station  in 
society  and  circumstances  gave  them  no  right  to  the 
distinction.  The  case  of  John  Shakspere  was  one  of 
those  complained  of".  Collier,  Life. 

"His  (Shaksper's)  most  notable  act  was  to  obtain 
on  two  occasions  by  flagrant  fraud  with  the  complicity 
of  the  Garter  King-at-arms,  a  gross  rascal  named 
John  Dethick,  a  grant  of  armorial  bearings,  to  which 


WIUJAM  SHAKSPKR'S  THIRST  FOR  WEAI/TH.  187 

he  had  no  right  whatever,  a  transaction  which  caused 
bitter  complaint  against  the  management  of  the  Her- 
ald's College,  although  it  refused  to  confirm  Dethick's 
action  in  both  instances."  O'Connor,  Hamlet's  Note- 
book, 74. 

The  application  of  John  Shakspere  claimed  that  his 
ancestors  had  been  advanced  by  Henry  VII,  and  that 
they  had  received  lands  in  Warwickshire,  and  that  his 
mother  was  the  daughter  of  one  of  the  heirs  of  Robert 
Arden,  Gentleman.  All  which  representations  were 
false,  and  the  application  was  not  granted.  "Toward 
the  close  of  the  year  1599,  a  renewed  attempt  was 
made  by  the  poet  to  obtain  a  grant  of  coat-armour 
for  his  father.  It  was  now  proposed  to  impale  the 
arms  of  Shakespere  with  those  of  Arden,  and  on  each 
occasion  ridiculous  statements"  (which  means  lying 
statements)  '  'were  made  respecting  the  claims  of  the 
family.  Both  were  really  descended  from  obscure 
country  yeomen.  But  the  heralds  made  out  that  the 
predecessors  of  John  Shakspere  were  rewarded  by  the 
crown  for  distinguished  services,  and  that  his  wife's 
ancestors  were  entitled  to  armorial  bearings.  Although 
the  poet's  relations  at  a  later  date  assumed  the  right  to 
the  coat  suggested  for  his  father,  in  1596,  it  does  not 
appear  that  either  of  the  proposed  grants  were  ratified  by 
the  College,  and  certainly  nothing  more  is  heard  of  the 
Arden  impalement".  H.-P.,  I,  178.  "The  rolls  of 
that  reign  (Henry  VII)  have  been  recently  and  care- 
fully searched,  and  the  name  of  Shakespeare,  accord- 
ing to  any  mode  of  spelling  it,  does  not  occur  in 
them."  Collier,  Life,  18. 

"If  the  reader  who  is  curious  in  such  matters  will 


1 88  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

turn  to  the  drafts  of  the  applicant,  that  of  1596,  on 
page  56,  vol.  2,  H.-P.,  and  that  of  1599,  on  page  60, 
and  examine  the  interlineations  that  were  made  from 
time  to  time  and  which  are  indicated  by  italics,  he  will 
see  how  the  applicant  was  drawn  from  falsehood  to 
falsehood  to  meet  the  objections  which  were  made 
against  his  claims  of  gentility. 

"In  the  first  application,  it  was  stated  that  it  was 
John  Shaksper's  'parents  and  late  ancestors',  who  ren- 
dered valiant  service  to  King  Henry  VII,  and  were 
rewarded  by  him.  This  was  not  deemed  sufficiently 
explicit,  and  so  it  was  interlined  that  the  said  John 
had  married  Mary,  daughter  and  one  of  the  heirs  of 
Robert  Arden,  of  Wilmecote,  in  the  said  county,  Gent. 
But  in  the  proposed  grant  of  1599,  it  is  stated  that  it 
was  John  Shakspere's  grandfather  who  had  rendered 
these  invaluable  services  to  King  Henry  VII,  and,  be- 
ing driven  to  particulars,  we  are  now  told  that  this 
grandfather  was  advanced  and  rewarded  wdth  lands 
and  tenements  given  him  in  parts  of  Warwickshire 
where  they  have  continued  by  some  descents  in  good 
reputation  and  credit.  This  is  wholesale  lying.  There 
were  no  such  lands,  and  they  had  not  descended  by 
some  descents  in  the  family.  But  this  is  not  all. 
Finding  the  application  opposed,  the  fertile  Shaksper 
falls  back  on  a  new  falsehood,  and  declares  that  a  coat 
of  arms  had  already  been  given  his  father  twenty  years 
before.  'And  he  also  produces  this,  his  ancient  coat 
of  arms,  heretofore  assigned  to  him  whilst  he  was  her 
Majesty's  officer  and  bailiff  at  that  time.'  And  White 
tells  us  that  upon  the  margin  of  the  draft  of  1596, 
John  Shakspere  'sheweth  a  patent  thereof  under  Clar- 


WIUJAM  SHAKSPER' s  THIRST  FOR  WEAI/TH.   189 

ence  Cook's  hands  in  paper,  twenty  years  past'.  (Life 
and  Genius. )  But  his  patent  can  no  more  be  found 
than  the  land  which  Henry  VII  granted,  etc.  The 
whole  thing  was  a  series  of  lies  and  forgeries,  a  tissue 
of  frauds  from  beginning  to  end."  Donnelly,  53. 

Richard  Grant  White  says  that  when  he  saw  the 
mean  house  in  which  John  Shaksper  lived,  "I  knew 
that  Shakspere  himself  must  have  felt  what  a  sham 
was  the  pretension  of  gentry  set  up  for  his  father, 
when  the  coat  of  arms  was  asked  for  and  obtained  by 
the  actor's  money  from  the  Herald's  College,  that 
coat  of  arms  which  Shakspere  prized  because  it  made 
him  a  gentleman  by  birth.  This  it  was  more  than  the 
squalid  appearance  of  the  place  which  saddened  me." 
Knglancl  Without  and  Within,  526. 

Nevertheless,  there  is  a  persistent  effort  on  the  part 
of  recent  biographers  of  Shaksper,  and  of  Shak- 
sperean  writers,  to  fix  that  coat  of  arms  upon  the 
player.  Rolfe  (Shakespeare  the  Boy)  is  so  enamored 
of  it  that  he  presents  it  twice  on  the  cover,  on  back 
and  side;  and  the  Temple  Shakespeare  stamps  it  on 
the  cover  of  each  volume;  Cargill's  paper  on  "Shake- 
speare as  an  Actor' ' ,  elsewhere  referred  to,  is  prefaced 
by  the  same  coat  of  arms;  and  even  Sidney  Lee's  book, 
1898,  bears  this  bogus  coat  on  the  cover.  Yet  the 
biographers  and  writers,  every  one  of  them,  knew  and 
know  that  the  thing  is  a  lie.  Look  out  for  frauds 
wherever  William  Shaksper  is  mentioned. 

Ratsie  said  that  the  player  was  penurious.  As  to 
this  feature  of  his  character  there  is  some  curious  evi- 
dence. "In  the  Chamberlain's  accounts  of  Stratford  is 
found  a  charge,  in  1614,  for  'one  quart  of  sack,  and 


190        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

one  quart  of  claret  wine,  given  to  a  preacher  at  the 
New  Place'  (Shaksper's  own  house).  What  manner 
of  man  must  he  have  been  who  would  require  the 
town  to  pay  for  the  wine  furnished  to  his  guests?" 
Donnelly,  57.  What  would  a  Virginian  think  of  a 
man  who  charged  a  visiting  preacher's  whiskey  to  the 
county  ? 

He  continued  to  buy  and  sell  land,  loan  money, 
prosecute  his  debtors,  collect  the  tithes,  manage  his 
farm,  brew  beer,  and  sell  malt;  and  was  one  of  the 
several  parties  who  were  engaged  in  a  conspiracy  to 
force  the  enclosure  of  the  common  land  in  the  vicinity 
of  Stratford;  in  other  words,  to  rob  the  poor  of  their 
immemorial  rights  of  pasturage.  "An  attempt  is 
made  by  W.  Combe,  the  squire  of  Welcombe,  to  en- 
close a  large  portion  of  the  neighboring  common  fields; 
this  attempt  was  opposed  by  the  corporation  but  was 
supported  by  Mainwaring  and  Shakspere.  The  latter 
clearly  acted  simply  with  a  view  to  his  own  personal 
interest".  Fleaj^,  173. 

"It  is  certain  that  the  poet  was  in  favor  of  the  en- 
closures, for  on  Dec.  23rd,  1614,  the  corporation  ad- 
dressed a  letter  of  remonstrance  to  him  on  the  subject, 
and  another  on  the  same  day  to  a  Mr.  Wainwaring. 
The  latter,  who  had  been  practically  bribed  by  some 
land  agreements  at  Welcombe,  undertook  to  protect 
the  interest  of  Shakspere.  So  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  three  parties  (one  Replingham  acting  with 
the  other  two  named)  were  acting  in  unison."  H.-P., 
I,  247.  "Three  greedy  cormorants  combined  to  rob 
the  people  of  their  ancient  rights. ' '  Donnelly,  60. 

William  Shaksper,  of  Stratford-on-Avon,  lived  fifty- 


WILLIAM  SHAKSPER'S  THIRST  FOR  WEALTH.  191 

two  years  in  Stratford  and  in  London.  He  is  the 
reputed  author  of  at  least  thirty-six  world  famous 
plays,  and  half  a  dozen  no  less  remarkable  poems.  As 
his  knowledge,  if  we  may  judge  by  these  productions, 
was  all-embracing,  and  his  wit  and  humor  superlative, 
it  is  to  be  supposed  that  his  conversation  was  in  keep- 
ing. It  is  also  to  be  supposed  that  he,  when  in  L,on- 
don,  associated  with  other  poets  and  literary  men,  who 
would  often  have  taken  notes  of  his  wise  and  felicitous 
sayings.  It  is  therefore  odd  that  there  should  have 
been  found  in  all  the  writings  of  that  age — in  books, 
letters,  diaries,  memoranda — record  of  but  two  conver- 
sations ever  held  by  any  persons  with  this  William 
Shaksper,  and  that  those  should  not  relate  to  poetry, 
the  dramatic  art,  or  any  kindred  matter,  even  his  the- 
ater, but  simply  to  the  enclosure  of  the  common-land 
above  spoken  of?  The  town  clerk  of  Stratford  made 
the  following  entry  in  his  record  book:  "17  Nov., 
(1614),  My  cosen  Shakespeare  comyng  yesterday  to 
town,  I  went  to  see  how  he  did.  He  told  me  that  they 
assured  him  they  ment  to  inclose  noe  further  than  to 
Gospell  Bush  and  so  upp  straight  (leaving  out  the  part 
of  the  Dyngles  to  the  Field)  to  the  Gate  in  Clopton 
hedge,  and  take  in  Salisbury es  peece;  and  that  they 
mean  in  April  to  survey  the  land,  and  then  to  give 
satisfaction  and  not  before;  and  he  and  Mr.  Hall  say 
that  they  think  ther  will  be  nothyng  done  at  all." 
And  the  further  entry,  in  Sept.  1615:  "Mr.  Shake- 
speare telling  J.  Greene  that  'I  was  not  able  to  bear 
the  enclosing  of  Welcombe'  ".  Mr.  Phillipps  adds, 
"why  the  last  observation  should  have  been  chronicled 
at  all  is  a  mystery." 


IQ2  SHAKSPER    NO? 

In  the  well-known  anecdote  found  written  in  Man- 
ningham's  diary,  player  Shaksper  is  said  to  have 
spoken  eight  words,  to- wit:  "William  the  Conqueror 
was  before  Richard  3rd."  Which  words,  with  the 
others  heard  by  the  town  clerk,  are  the  sum  total  of 
the  recorded  utterances  of  the  "myriad-minded  poet 
and  dramatist",  if  William  Shaksper  was  William 
Shakespeare ! 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF  THE   PLAYS.  1 93 


CHAPTER    IX. 

THE  TESTIMONY  OF  THE  PLAYS. 

I  have  shown  the  sort  of  people  William  Shaksper 
sprang  from,  and  the  sort  he  associated  with  in  his 
youth,  the  sordid  environment,  the  lack  of  all  oppor- 
tunity for  mental  improvement,  the  character  of  the 
people  he  went  to,  and  all  the  rest  of  his  life  associated 
with,  in  London,  the  nature  of  the  public  theater  and 
the  audiences  that  frequented  it.  So  far  the  possibil- 
ities of  Shaksper  having  been  capable  of  writing  the 
Shakespeare  plays  are  all  against  him.  I  now  propose 
to  show  by  the  evidence  of  the  plays  themselves  that 
the  question  of  his  authorship  is  not  worth  one  mo- 
ment's  consideration. 

What  kind  of  language  did  young  Shaksper  use 
when  he  reached  London,  at  the  age  of  22  or  23?  It 
certainly  was  not  English;  that  he  had  never  learned. 
He  must  have  spoken  the  language  of  his  parents  and 
grandparents,  of  his  relations  and  neighbors,  the  only 
language  he  could  have  heard  since  he  was  born.  Mr. 
Phillipps  tells  us  that  nearly  every  one  of  the  boy's 
connections  was  a  farmer,  and  farmers,  the  world  over, 
use  no  language  other  than  the  language  of  the  soil. 
That,  in  the  present  case,  was  the  Warwickshire  dia- 
lect, and  it  was  in  great  degree  unintelligible  to  the 


194  SHAKSP^R   NOT   SHAKKSPEARlt 

inhabitants  of  other  counties.*  "The  members  of 
Elizabeth's  Parliament  could  not  comprehend  each 
other.  When  the  soldiers  Elizabeth  summoned  were 
grouped  about  the  camp,  they  could  not  understand  a 
word  of  command  unless  given  by  officers  from  their 
own  shire. ' '  Morgan. 

Macaulay,  Hist.  Eng.  I,  298,  describing  the  English 
country  gentlemen  of  the  time  of  the  accession  of 
William  III,  said:  "His  language  and  pronunciation 
were  such  as  we  should  now  expect  to  have  only  from 
the  most  ignorant  clowns.  His  oaths,  coarse  jests 
and  scurrilous  terms  of  abuse  were  uttered  with  the 
broadest  accent  of  his  province.  It  was  easy  to  dis- 
cern, from  the  first  words  which  he  spoke,  whether  he 
came  from  Somersetshire  or  Yorkshire".  This  was  a 
full  hundred  years  after  William  Shaksper  carried  his 
patois  to  lyondon. 

And  of  this  patois,  what  would  be  the  extent  of  the 
young  man's  vocabulary?  Certainly  not  more  than 

*  Morgan  gives  some  pages  of  eighteenth  century  Warwick- 
shire patois,  in  part  as  follows: 

Old  man:  (meeting  lad  with  fishing  pole  on  his  way  to  the 
Avon)  "  'E  waund  thu  bist  agwain  fishun'?" 

Lad:  "Yus,  gaffer,  B  be  gwan  pint  umbit." 

Old  man:  "Oy  Breckling,  B  'ad  gist  spurt  times.  Thee 
mindst  Red-nob,  doesn't?  Ah,  thee  shoodst  sin  tin,  reklin, 
when  Lard  Coventry  come  age,  when  Brud  Strit  long  o'  Pashaws 
wuz  a  chock  tables  un  foolks  sittin  down  dinner  at  un  and  cad- 
die enow  to  phaze  divil  'imself!"  etc.,  etc. 

The  patois  two  hundred  years  earlier,  in  the  days  of  Shak- 
sper, must  have  been  by  many  degrees  more  barbarous  than  the 
sample  here  given.  Truly,  a  fine  equipment  for  a  young  man 
ambitious  for  literary  honors,  coming  to  London  at  the  age 
of  22! 


TESTIMONY   OF  THK   PlyAYS.  195 

four  or  five  hundred  words,  at  the  outside.  The  first 
thing  he  had  to  do  was  to  divest  himself  of  the  patois 
and  begin  to  learn  English.  Max  Muller  in  '  'Science 
of  language",  says:  "We  are  told  by  a  country  cler- 
gyman that  some  of  the  laborers  in  his  parish  had  not 
three  hundred  words  in  their  vocabulary.  A  well 
educated  person  in  England, who  has  been  at  a  public 
school,  and  at  the  university,  who  reads  the  Bible,  the 
Times,  and  all  the  books  of  Mudie's  library,  seldom 
uses  more  than  3,000  words  in  actual  conversation. 
Accurate  thinkers  and  close  reasoners  .  .  .  sel- 
dom employ  a  larger  stock,  and  eloquent  speakers  may 
rise  to  the  command  of  10,000.  Shakespeare,  who 
displayed  a  greater  variety  of  expression  than  proba- 
bly any  writer  in  any  and  all  languages,  produced  all 
his  plays  with  about  15,000  words.  Milton's  works 
were  built  up  with  8,000."  In  a  course  of  three  lec- 
tures delivered  at  Oxford,  and  reprinted  at  Chicago, 
Professor  Muller  said:  "Few  of  us  use  more  than 
3, ooo  or  4, ooo. words;  Shakespeare  used  about  15,000." 
Craik  estimates  the  Shakespeare  vocabulary  (poems 
and  plays)  at  21,000  words,  and  Clark  agrees  with 
Craik,  as  also  does  Meiklejohn. 

This  extraordinary  vocabulary  seems  entirely  too 
great  for  one  individual,  and  hence  it  has  been  argued 
that  this  alone  is  enough  to  show  that  several  hands 
took  part  in  the  Shakespeare  plays.  Thus  Stotsen- 
burg,  Indianapolis  News,  5th  May,  1897,  says:  "Such 
voluminous  and  learned  writers  as  Thackeray  or  Dick- 
ens (or  Fiske)  do  not  use  over  5,000  words.  John 
Milton  surpassed  all  other  wrriters  as  to  word  use  by 
stretching  the  number  to  seven  thousand.  Presump- 


196  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKKSPICARE. 

tively,  therefore,  if  the  writers  of  the  plays  were 
as  prolific  in  words  as  Milton,  there  were  three  of 
them  at  least.  If  judged  by  the  Thackeray  stand- 
ard there  were  not  less  than  four".  Inasmuch  as, 
with  four  writers  as  prolific  in  words  as  Thackeray, 
one-half  the  words  in  their  respective  vocabularies 
would  be  identical,  there  would  be  required  eight  such 
writers  to  make  up  one  vocabulary  as  extensive  as 
"Shakespeare's".  This  agrees  with  T.  W.  White's 
estimate.  He  assigns  certain  of  the  plays  to  Greene, 
Marlowe,  Peele,  Nash,  Lodge,  Chapman,  Daniel  and 
Bacon.  Stotsenburg  finds  positive  evidence  that  the 
Sonnets  were  written  by  Sidney,  and  the  Venus  and 
Lucrece  by  Marlowe.  The  vocabulary  of  Shakespeare 
from  this  point  of  view  is  not  unreasonable. 

Marsh,  lectures  on  the  Eng.  Language,  182,  says: 
"If  a  scholar  were  to  be  required  to  name  without  ex- 
amination, the  authors  whose  English  vocabulary  was 
the  largest,  he  probably  would  specify  the  all-embrac- 
ing Shakespeare,  and  the  all-knowing  Milton.  And 
yet,  in  all  the  works  of  the  great  dramatist  there  occur 
not  more  than  15,000  words,  in  the  poems  of  Milton 
not  more  than  8,000." 

The  English  language  of  to-day  is  comparatively 
settled,  but  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth,  the  number  of 
words  was  small — the  language  was  in  process  of  mak- 
ing. The  great  writers,  Bacon,  Spenser,  Hooker,  the 
author  or  authors  of  the  Shakespeare  poems  and  plays, 
and  others,  were  compelled  to  coin  multitudes  of  new 
words  from  Latin  and  Greek;  from  French  and  other 
modern  languages;  but  above  all  from  Latin,  to  give 
expression  to  their  thoughts;  and  thus,  within  a  few 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THK   PI<AYS.  197 

years,  an  enormous  number  of  new  words  were 
brought  into  the  language.  Dr.  Johnson  says  that 
from  the  works  of  Bacon  alone  a  dictionary  of  the 
English  language  could  be  compiled. 

[Donnelly  says:  "Even  as  this  book  is  being  printed, 
a  writer  in  the  Chicago  Tribune  calls  attention  to  the 
surprising  fact  that  the  New  English  Dictionary  now 
being  published  in  England,  and  in  which  is  given  the 
time  and  the  place  when  and  where  each  English 
word  made  its  first  appearance,  proves  that  in  the  first 
two  hundred  pages  of  the  work  there  are  146  words, 
now  in  common  use,  which  were  invented,  or  formed 
out  of  the  raw  materials  of  his  own  and  other  lan- 
guages, by  the  man  who  wrote  the  Shakespeare  plays. 
And  the  writer  shows  that  at  this  rate  our  total  in- 
debtedness to  the  man  we  call  Shakespeare  for  addi- 
tions to  the  vocabulary  of  the  English  tongue  would 
be  not  less  than  5,000  words.  We  owe  to  the  poet  the 
first  use  of  the  word  air  in  one  of  its  senses  as  a  noun, 
and  three  as  a  verb  or  participle.  He  first  said  air- 
drawn,  and  airless.  He  added  a  new  significance  to 
airy  and  aerial.  Nobody  before  him  had  written 
aired.  .  .  .  In  no  previous  writer  have  Dr.  Mur- 
ray's argus  eyes  detected  accidently,  nor  any  of  the  fol- 
lowing: abjectly,  acutely,  admiringly,  adoptedly,  ad- 
versely. To  absolutely,  accordingly,  actively  and  affec- 
tionately, 'Shakespeare'  added  a  new  sense.  It  is  not 
a  little  surprising  that  the  word  abreast  was  never 
printed  before  the  couplet: 

'My  soul  shall  thine  keep  company  in  heaven; 
Tarry,  sweet  soul,  for  mine,  then  fly  abreast,' 


198  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

Of  the  words   and   meanings  first   given   by   Shake- 
speare, at  least  two-thirds  are  of  classic  origin."] 

How  came  the  untaught  William  Shaksper  by  the 
extraordinary  and  prodigious  vocabulary  exhibited  in 
the  Shakespeare  plays? 

Macaulay  (Kssay  on  Dryden)  tells  us  that,  '  'Genius 
will  not  furnish  the  poet  with  a  vocabulary;  it  will  not 
teach  him  what  word  exactly  corresponds  to  his  idea, 
and  will  most  fully  convey  it  to  others.  Information 
and  experience  are  necessary;  not  for  the  purpose  of 
strengthening  the  imagination,  which  is  never  so 
strong  as  in  people  incapable  of  reasoning — savages, 
children,  etc.;  but  for  the  purpose  of  enabling  the 
artist  to  communicate  his  conceptions  to  others.  .  .  . 
Should  a  man,  gifted  by  nature  with  all  the  genius  of 
Canova,  attempt  to  carve  a  statue  without  instruction 
as  to  the  management  of  his  chisel,  or  attention  to  the 
anatomy  of  the  human  body,  he  would  produce  some- 
thing compared  with  which  the  Highlander  at  the 
door  of  the  snuff-shop  would  deserve  admiration.  If 
an  uninitiated  Raphael  were  to  attempt  a  painting,  it 
would  be  a  mere  daub." 

I  asked  a  Professor  of  Rhetoric  in  one  of  our  great 
Western  universities  what  he  considered  the  extent  of 
the  vocabulary  of  a  laborer  or  small  farmer  in  his 
region.  He  replied,  "From  250  to  400  words,  accord- 
ing to  his  location. ' ' 

I  asked  another  Professor  of  Rhetoric,  this  time  in 
one  of  the  Eastern  universities,  who  had  for  many 
years  taught  L,atin  and  Greek,  what  course  he  would 
advise  a  young  man  of  limited  opportunities  in  his 
early  years  to  pursue  in  order  to  attain  a  fairly  copi- 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PLAYS.  1 99 

ous  vocabulary;  not  telling  him  however  that  the 
youth  I  had  in  mind  was  one  William  Shaksper.  He 
laid  me  out  a  course  that  would  require  hard  study  for 
years,  and  practice;  reading  especially  and  always  the 
Bible;  the  best  prose  authors  and  poets,  above  all 
Shakespeare;  translating  English  into  Latin,  and  re- 
translating in  English.  ' ' Practice  is  the  greatest  thing, 
versate  manu  diu  nocteque".  Above  all  (the  best  poets 
and  prose  writers)  Shakespeare!  Study  him,  young 
man,  if  you  wish  to  enlarge  your  vocabulary,  and 
learn  what  the  English  language  is  capable  of! 


Hartley  Coleridge,  in  his  life  of  Massinger,  says  of 
that  poet:  "His  classical  allusions  are  frequent,  but 
not  like  those  of  Ben  Jonson,  recondite,  nor  like  those 
of  Shakespeare  and  of  Milton,  amalgamated  and  con- 
substantiated  with  his  native  thought." 

That  is  to  say,  Hartley  Coleridge,  a  competent  judge 
of  education  and  literary  attainments,  ranks  the  author 
of  the  Shakespeare  plays  with  Milton  for  profundity 
of  classical  learning,  and  both  above  the  learned  Jon- 
son.  There  is  as  clear  evidence  of  classical  learning 
in  Titus  Andronicus,  Love's  Labour's  Lost,  Midsum- 
mer Night's  Dream,  Troilus  and  Cressida,  and  many 
other  plays,  as  in  Milton's  Lycidas. 

"The  marvelous  accuracy,  the  real  substantial  learn- 
ing, of  the  three  Roman  plays  of  Shakespeare  present 
the  most  complete  evidence  to  our  mind  that  they 
were  the  results  of  profound  study  of  the  whole  range 
of  Roman  history,  including  the  nice  details  of  Roman 
manners,  not  in  those  days  to  be  acquired  in  a  compendious 


200        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

form,  but  to  be  brought  out  by  diligent  reading  alone." 
Knight,  528. 

"In  his  Roman  plays  he  appears  co-existent  with 
his  wonderful  characters,  and  to  have  read  all  the 
obscure  pages  of  Roman  history  with  a  clearer  eye 
than  philosopher  or  historian.  When  he  emploj^ed 
L,atinisms  in  the  construction  of  his  sentences  and 
even  in  the  creation  of  new  words,  he  does  so  with 
singular  facility  and  unerring  correctness".  Id.,  1.  c. 
Any  one  who  has  studied  an  ancient  language  knows 
that  years  of  hard  work  were  passed  before  such 
language  became  "amalgamated  and  consubstantiated 
with  his  native  thought",  if  it  ever  did  (and  in  most 
cases  it  did  not);  that  is,  became  to  him  as  his  native 
tongue.  Every  Professor  and  every  educated  man 
will  agree  to  this  in  the  case  of  John  Robinson.  The 
circumstances  were  far  more  adverse  in  the  day  of 
William  Shaksper. 

Trench,  "On  the  Study  of  Words",  Lecture  IV, 
says:  "We  must  not  omit  him  who  is  a  maker  (of 
words)  by  the  very  right  of  his  name — I  mean  the 
poet.  .  .  .  The  passion  of  such  times,  the  all- 
fusing  imagination,  will  at  once  suggest  and  justify 
audacities  in  speech  upon  which  in  calmer  moods  he 
would  not  venture,  or  if  he  ventured  would  fail  to 
carry  others  with  him;  for  only  the  fluent  metal  runs 
easily  into  novel  shapes  and  moulds.  .  .  He 

will  enrich  his  native  tongue  with  words  unknown 
and  non-existent  before — non-existent,  that  is,  save  in 
their  elements;  for  in  the  historic  period  of  a  language 
it  is  not  permitted  to  any  man  to  bring  new  roots  into  it, 
but  only  to  work  on  already  given  materials;  to  evolve 


THE   TESTIMONY  OF   THE   PI<AYS.  2OI 

what  is  latent  therein,  to  combine  what  is  apart,  to 
recall  what  has  fallen  out  of  sight.  The  more  deliberate 
coining  of  words  will  often  find  place  for  the  supplying 
of  discovered  deficiencies  in  a  language.  The  manner 
in  which  men  become  aware  of  such  deficiencies  is 
through  comparison  of  their  own  language  with  another 
and  a  richer,  a  comparison  which  is  forced  upon  them, 
so  that  they  cannot  put  it  by,  when  it  becomes  neces- 
sary for  them  to  express  in  their  own  tongue  that 
which  has  already  found  utterance  in  another,  and  so 
has  shown  that  it  is  utterable  in  human  speech.  With- 
out such  a  comparison  the  existence  of  the  want  would 
probably  have  seldom  dawned  on  the  most  thought- 
ful". 

On  the  same  matter,  in  Lecture  V,  this  writer  says: 
"One  of  the  arts  of  a  great  poet  or  prose  writer  who 
wishes  to  add  emphasis  to  his  style,  to  bring  out  all 
the  latent  forces  of  .his  native  tongue,  will  very  often  be 
to  reconnect  by  his  use  of  it  a  word  with  its  original 
derivation.  How  often  Milton  does  this!"  Dr.  Trench 
might  have  coupled  Shakespeare  with  Milton  here,  for 
the  allegation  is  as  true  of  one  as  of  the  other.  The 
habitual  coining  of  words  from  the  Latin  by  an  Eng- 
lish writer,  according  to  this  author,  is  the  evidence  of 
a  thorough  knowledge  of  and  familiarity  with  Latin. 
He  has  "to  work  on  already  given  materials  to  evolve 
what  is  latent  therein,"  etc.,  etc.  How  could  Shake- 
speare have  compared  his  language  with  the  other  and 
richer  one  had  he  not  been  profoundly  acquainted  with 
the  latter  through  study  of  books  ? 

Hallam,  Lit.  Eur.,  speaking  of  "the  phrases  unin- 
telligible and  improper  except  in  the  case  of  their 


202  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE). 

primitive  roots  which  occur  so  copiously  in  the  (Shake- 
speare) plays,"  says:  "In  the  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream  these  are  much  less  frequent  than  in  his  later 
dramas,  but  here  we  find  several  instances,  thus:  'things 
base  and  vile,  holding  no  quantity,  for  value';  rivers 
'that  have  overborne  their  continents,'  the  continente 
riva  of  Horace;  'compact  of  imagination';  'something 
of  great  constancy,'  for  consistency;  'sweet  Pyramus 
translated  there';  'the  laws  of  Athens,  which  by 
no  means  we  may  extenuate1 .  I  have  considerable 
doubt  whether  any  of  these  expressions  would  be 
found  in  any  of  the  contemporary  prose  of  Elizabeth's 
reign;  but  could  authority  be  produced  for  L,atinisms 
so  forced,  it  is  still  not  very  likely  that  one  who  did 
not  understand  their  proper  meaning  would  have  in- 
troduced them  into  poetry." 

Charles  Knight,  speaking  of  Shakespeare's  use  of 
the  word  expedient,  says:  "The  word  properly  means 
'that  disengages  itself  from  all  entanglements'.  To 
set  at  liberty  the  foot  which  was  held  fast  is  exped-ire. 
Shakespeare  always  uses  this  word  in  strict  accordance 
with  its  derivation,  as  in  truth  he  does  most  words  which 
may  be  called  learned. 

Judge  Holmes,  690,  says:  '  'Upon  the  word  premised, 
Theobald  made  the  observation  that  Shakespeare  is 
very  peculiar  in  his  adjectives;  and  it  is  much  in  his 
manner  to  use  the  words  borrowed  from  the  Latin 
closer  to  their  original  signification  than  they  were 
vulgarly  used  in;  so  here  he  uses  premised  in  the  sense 
of  the  word  from  which  it  is  derived,  praemissus,  that 
is,  sent  before.  This  is  the  use  of  a  writer  whose 
mind  is  so  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  I^atin  Ian- 


THK   TKSTIMONY   OF   THK   PI^AYS.  203 

guage  that  he  unconsciously  incorporates  it  into  his 
English". 

Dr.  Baynes,  Shakespeare  Studies,  225,  says  of 
Touchstone's  words  to  Audrey,  "I  am  here  with  thee 
and  thy  goats  as  the  most  capricious  poet  Ovid  was 
among  the  Goths".  Ovid  was  among  the  Goths 
(Gotes,  the  Getae,  a  Thracian  tribe  among  whom 
Ovid  in  his  banishment,  dwelt).  That  ''the  epithet 
'capricious'  {caper,  a  goat)  in  this  speech  is  a  good  ex- 
ample of  the  subtle  playing  with  words,  the  skillful 
suggestion  of  double  meanings  of  which  Shakespeare 
in  common  with  Ovid,  is  so  fond." 

Dr.  W.  Theobald,  Baconiana,  2,  453,  says:  "When 
the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  wrote 

While  that  the  coulter  rusts 

That  should  deracinate  such  savagery — 

the  coining  of  the  new  word  deracinate  (to  tear  up  by 
the  roots)  is  evidence  of  his  thorough  familiarity  with 
the  I^atin  tongue.  And  there  are  hundreds  and  hun- 
dreds of  words  like  that  coined  by  him. ' ' 

In  Act  V,  scene  i,  Henry  VI,  Part  i,  King  Henry 

says: 

For  I  always  thought 

It  was  both  impious  and  unnatural 

That  such  immanity  and  bloody  strife 

Should  reign  among  professors  of  one  faith. 

And  in  scene  3,  Joan  says: 

The  Regent  conquers  and  the  Frenchman  flies — 
Now  help  me  charming  spells,  and  periapts. 

Now  these  words    "immanity",  and  "periapt",  if 


204  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

they  stood  alone,  instead  of  being  examples  of  a  nu- 
merous class  of  words  in  the  plays,  would  prove  that 
the  author  was  perfectly  familiar  with  both  Latin 
and  Greek.  '  'Jmmamfas* '  is  a  Latin  word,  used  by 
Cicero  (meaning  barbarity,  cruelty),  but  certainly 
one  which  no  Englishman  not  a  good  Latin  scholar 
would  dream  of  using;  and  the  word  "periapt"  is 
equally  significant  of  a  good  knowledge  of  Greek,  be- 
ing directly  derived  from  the  Greek  word  periapto,  to 
tie  around  some  part  of  the  body.  Words  of  this 
class,  or  English  words  used  in  a  classical  sense,  are 
numerous  in  the  plays,  and  prove  even  more  directly 
than  classical  references  that  the  author  was  a  pro- 
found classical  scholar,  as  he  never  could  have  ac- 
quired them  by  the  use  of  translations,  but  only 
through  his  own  familiarity  with  the  classical  lan- 
guage. 

In  Baconiana,  VI,  are  further  illustrations  by  Dr. 
Theobald: 

"With  cadent  tears  fret  channels  in  her  cheeks". 

Lear,  i,  4,  307. 
from  cado,  to  fall. 

A  very  curious  piece  of  L,atinity  occurs  in  Helen's 
allusion  to  her  hopeless  love  for  Bertram: 

I  know  I  love  in  vain     .     .     . 

Yet  in  this  captious  and  intenible  sieve, 

I  still  pour  in  the  waters  of  my  love. 

All 's  Well,  i,  3,  207. 

Captious  has  the  meaning  of  the  word  capio,  I  take  or 
receive.  Intenible  represents  the  word  tenio,  I  hold, 
with  the  privative  participle  in,  i.  e.,  I  do  not  hold. 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PLAYS.  205 

The  frozen  regions  of  the  Alps 
Or  any  other  ground  inhabitable. 

Richard  II,  i,  i,  64. 

7;zhabi  table,  wwhabitable.  The  word  is  used  in  the 
L,atin  sense,  which  is  exactly  the  reverse  of  the  cur- 
rent sense. 

Oppugnancy,  pro-pugnation,  repugn,  with  the  cog- 
nate words  repugnancy,  and  repugnant.  These  words 
are  all  used  by  Shakespeare  in  their  strictest  classical 
sense,  and  they  show  in  a  very  striking  way  the  dis- 
criminating accuracy  of  his  classical  diction. 

.     .     .     What  discord  follows:  each  thing  meets 
In  mere  oppugnancy,  (active  and  offensive  warfare). 

Troilus  and  Cressida,  i,  3,  119. 

"What propugnation  is  in  one  man's  valor",  etc.  1.  c. 

II,  2,  136. 

(defensive  warfare).  What  possible  defense  can  one 
man,  however  brave,  afford? 

.     .     .     Sleep  upon  it 

And  let  the  foes  quietly  cut  their  throats 

Without  repugnancy.  Tiuion,  III,  5,  42. 

Rcpugno,  passive  resistance. 

Double  is  an  English  word  used  in  a  classic  sense: — 

The  magnifico     .     .     .     hath  in  his  effect  a  voice  potential, 
As  double  as  the  duke's.  Othello,  I,  3,  12. 

The  lyatin  word  to  double,  duplex,  may  also  mean 
thick,  stout,  strong,  and  this  is  the  meaning  in  the 
passage  quoted.  In  Coriolanus,  II,  3,  121: 

His  doubled  spirit  requickened  what  in  flesh  vf&sfatigate, 


.206  SHAKSPJSR   NOT 

i.  e.y  his   strong  and   invincible  spirit,  etc. 
Fatigue  is  the  1,atinfatigatus. 

And  bowed  his  eminent  top  to  their  low  rank. 

All's  Well,  I,  2,41. 

The  Latin  word  emineo,  to  jut  out,  to  project.  It 
is  a  word  of  measurement,  not  simply  an  expression 
of  renown. 

She  doth  evitate  and  show  a  thousand  irreligious,  cursed  horns. 

Merry  Wives,  V.  5,  241. 

The  Latin  word  evitare,  to  avoid. 

The  word  stelled  is  used  with  two  absolutely  distinct 
meanings,  neither  of  them  English,  one  Latin,  the 
other  Greek.  The  Latin  sense  is  related  to  the  word 
stella,  a  star  or  constellation.  Of  Lear,  in  the  Tem- 
pest, it  is  said: 

The  Sea,  with  such  a  storm  as  his  bare  head 

In  hell  black  night  endured,  would  have  buoyed  up, 
And  quenched  the  stelled  fires. 

The  other  sense  is  from  the  Greek  word  stello,  mean- 
ing to  fix,  set  in  its  place.  It  occurs  twice,  first  in  the 
24th  Sonnet: 

My  eye  hath  played  the  painter  and  hath  stelled 
Thy  beauty's  form  in  the  table  of  my  heart., 

The  other  in  Lucrece  (1443): 

To  this  well  painted  piece  is  Lucrece  come 
To  find  a  face  where  all  distress  is  stelled. 

A  very  curious  word  is  constringed,  which  occurs 
once  only: 


THK   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PlyAYS.  207 

"The  dreadful  spirit  which  shipnien  do  the  hurricane  call,  con- 
stringed  iu  mass  by  the  Almighty  Sun." 

Troilus  and  Cres.,  VII,  171. 

The  word  is  Latin.  Constringo  means  "bind  to- 
gether", "tie  up  like  a  bundle",  and  so,  metaphor- 
ically, "give  coherence  or  consistence". 

"Simular  is  not  English,  but  Shakespeare  uses  it: 

Thou  perjured  and  thou  simular  man  of  virtue, 
Thou  art  incestuous.  Lear,  III,  2,  51. 

Simula  is  Latin,  meaning  to  copy,  or  imitate,  coun- 
terfeit, feign.  Simular  man  of  virtue,  therefore, 
means  a  man  whose  virtue  is  sham  or  counterfeit. 

The  word  speculation  in  English  refers  to  mental  op- 
eration, not  eyesight.  Shakespeare  always,  and  Bacon 
often,  uses  it  in  the  physical  sense,  outward  light,  not 
inward  vision: 

Thou  hast  no  speculation  in  those  eyes, 
Which  thou   dost  glare  with. 

Macbeth,  III,  4,  95. 

Such  ex-sufflicate  and  blown  surmises. 

Othello,  III,  3,  182. 

The  Latin  words  ex  and  stifflo,  to  blow  out.  It 
means  inflated,  wind-bags,  bubbles." 

"A  good  many  instances  of  classic  construction  in 
the  grammar  of  the  sentences  are  to  be  found — sen- 
tences cast  into  grammatical  form  not  strictly  English, 
which  can  not  well  be  parsed  without  the  help  of  the 
Latin  grammar.  Dr.  Abbot,  -in  his  learned  and  ex- 
haustive 'Shakespeare  Grammar' ,  gives  many  illustra- 
tions of  this' ' : 


208  SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

Mr.  Theobald  closes  his  paper  thus:  "Here,  then, 
are  some  thirty  words  out  of  a  collection  of  more  than 
250,  showing  that  L,atin  was  a  step-mother  tongue  to 
the  poet;  he  had  probably  been  accustomed  to  use  it 
as  an  instrument  of  expression,  and  the  arts  and  frag- 
ments of  it  were  perpetually  scattered  in  his  English 
composition.  ...  If  the  writer  was  so  familiar 
with  the  classic  languages  as  to  have  all  the  literature 
of  Greece  and  Rome  at  his  command — if  Latin  was  so 
familiar  to  him  that  it  obtruded  itself  upon  his  En- 
glish, and  made  him  talk  and  write  with  a  foreign 
(classic)  accent,  he  could  not  have  been  such  a  man  as 
William  Shakspere  was. ' ' 

One  thing  is  puzzling:  William  Shaksper  is  de- 
clared by  Fiske  and  others  to  have  written  the  plays 
to  fill  his  theater;  and  we  are  told  by  all  his  biogra- 
phers that  the  audiences  were  made  up  of  illiterate 
persons.  How.  much  then  could  this  rabble  have  com- 
prehended? What  idea  did  they  attach,  for  example, 
to  "deracinating  savagery";  to  "incarnadining  the 
multitudinous  seas";  to  the  apostrophizing  of  "peri- 
apts"; to  a  "captious  and  intenible  sieve";  or  "ex- 
suffiicate  surmises"?  How  much  of  his  fifteen  to 
twenty-one  thousand  vocabulary  was  comprehended 
by  individuals  whose  requirements  and  attainments 
were  restricted  to  three  or  four  hundred  words? 
Very  little  indeed,  I  should  say.  Would  not  the  un- 
known language  of  the  plays  have  bewildered  and 
disgusted  the  stinkards  and  prostitutes  who  made  up 
the  bulk  of  the  audience;  and  would  they  not,  at 
times,  in  their  fury,  have  given  the  players  a  hiding? 

The  rustic  Shaksper  comes  to  London  with  what  ac- 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PLAYS.  2OQ 

complishments  we  have  seen — almost  devoid  of  polished 
accomplishments,  Halliwell-Phillipps  says — speaking 
the  patois  of  his  neighborhood,  quite  uninstructed  in 
English;  (had  he  even  gone  to  school,  in  Stratford,  he 
would  have  been  taught  I^atin  but  not  English), 
finds  employment,  at  first  outside  the  theater,  then  as 
a  servitour  inside;  is  in  time  admitted  to  the  company 
of  players,  and  what  sort  of  men  they  were  morally 
and  intellectually,  we  have  seen;  works  his  way  up, 
and  in  a  few  years  becomes  part  proprietor  in  the 
theater,  and  is  on  the  road  to  secure  a  money  compe- 
tence. In  the  summer  and  autumn,  he  and  the  rest 
of  the  company  stroll  all  over  England,  even  into  Scot- 
land; in  the  winter  they  gather  at  the  Curtain  or  the 
Globe.  Five  or  six  years  after  this  youth  leaves 
Stratford,  there  come  from  the  press  two  poems, 
bearing  on  their  title  pages  the  name  of  '  'William  Shake- 
peare",  a  name  this  players  family,  in  all  its  genera- 
tions and  branches,  had  never  borne;  which  poems 
were  and  are  to-day  unsurpassed  in  the  language  for 
choice  diction,  and  showed  that  the  author  was  pos- 
sessed of  a  thorough  knowledge  of  English  and 
familiarity  with  I^atin.  The  poems  were  both  pre- 
ceded and  followed  by  a  series  of  plays  which  dis- 
covered a  vocabulary  in  extent  exceeding  that  used 
by  any  previous  poet  or  prose  writer;  a  large  number 
of  words  coined  directly  from  the  L,atin  or  Greek 
roots,  or  from  French,  Spanish,  Italian.  The  plots 
of  these  plays,  many  of  them,  were  taken  from  Span- 
ish and  Italian  stories,  then  untranslated  into  English. 
Is  it  probable,  is  it  possible,  that  all  this  wealth  of 
literature  was  created  by  the  raw  uneducated  youth 


210  SHAKSPER   NOT    SHAKKSPEARE. 

who  began  his  literary  life  at  the  theater  door?  The 
writer  of  the  poems  and  plays,  as  they  themselves 
give  evidence,  was  most  thoroughly  educated,  and 
was,  from  the  issuing  of  the  first  play,  a  past-master 
of  the  English  language.  Prof.  George  L,.  Craik  says: 
"In  whose  handling  was  language  ever  such  a  flame 
of  fire  as  it  is  in  his?  His  wonderful  potency  in  the 
use  of  this  instrument  would  alone  set  him  above  all 
other  writers. ' ' 

This  is  the  testimony  of  scholars.  Emerson  tells 
us  that:  "He  of  all  men,  best  understood  the  En- 
glish language. ' ' 

Prof.  N.  G.  Clark,  (Elements  of  the  English  Lan- 
guage) says:  "The  great  number  of  words  which  he 
employs  are  never  used  carelessly;  they  are  always  the 
fit  words,  and  can  rarely  be  changed  for  others  as  ex- 
pressive in  their  place."  .  .  .  "His  power  lay 
not  simply  in  the  extent  of  his  vocabulary,  needful  as 
this  was  to  his  purpose,  but  in  the  skillful  combination 
and  power  of  the  words  he  employed.  .  .  .  It  is 
not  too  much  to  say,  that  English  speech  as  well  as 
literature  owes  more  to  him  than  to  any  other  man. 
.  .  .  Not  unwisely  has  the  student  been  referred 
to  Shakespeare  next  to  the  authorized  version  of  the 
Bible  for  the  best  studies  in  the  use  of  his  native 
tongue." 

Mrs.  Cowden  Clark  begins  her  Shakespeare  Key: 

"Never  was  an  author  who  combined  so  many  dif- 
ferent words  in  his  single  writings,  and  not  only  used 
so  many  different  words,  but  so  many  varied  forms  of 
words  as  Shakespeare;  never  was  author  who  com- 
prised so  many  different  phrases  and  sentences,"  etc. 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PLAYS.  211 

Professor  J.  M.  D.  Meiklejohn,  in  his  English  Lit- 
erature, p.  372,  says:  "It  is  not  sufficent  to  say  that 
Shakespeare's  power  of  thought,  of  feeling,  and  of 
expression,  required  three  times  the  number  of  words" 
(that  Milton  used)  "to  express  itself;  we  must  also 
say  that  Shakespeare's  power  of  expression  shows  infi- 
nitely greater  skill,  subtility  and  cunning  than  is  to  be 
found  in  the  works  of  Milton.  Shakespeare  had  also 
a  marvellous  power  of  making  new  phrases,  most 
of  which  have  become  part  and  parcel  of  our  lan- 
guage," etc. 

Ruggles  says:  "This  poet  was  evidently  a  great 
worker  in  words.  He  had  dominion  over  every  form 
of  expression,  understood  the  dramatic  effect  and 
moral  force  of  each  different  turn  of  phrase,  and  ran 
his  thoughts  into  any  mould  he  pleased,  and  that  too 
without  loss  of  grace  and  felicity  of  expression.  .  .  . 
Prominent  skill  belongs  to  the  writer  of  these  plays, 
who,  in  addition  to  the  poet's  song,  and  the  philoso- 
pher's insight,  possessed  an  ingenuity  in  the  use  of 
language  so  extraordinary  as  to  make  every  word  con- 
tribute to  the  main  effect. ' ' 

George  P.  Marsh  speaks  of  the  "Bible,  Shakespeare, 
and  Milton,"  as  "the  three  lodestars  that  held  the  lan- 
guage firm,  without  whom  it  would  probably  before 
our  time  have  become  rather  Romance  than  Gothic  in 
in  its  vocabulary. ' ' 

Craig   says   of  Shakespeare:     "He   has   exhausted 
the    old   world     of    our   actual   experience. 
The  men  and  the  manners  of  all  countries  and  of  all  ages 
are  there;  the   lovers   and   warriors,    the  priests  and 
prophetesses,   of  the  old  heroic  and   kingly  times  of 


212  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

Greece — the  Athenians  of  the  days  of  Pericles  and 
Alcibiades, — the  proud  patricians  and  turbulent  com- 
monalty of  the  earliest  period  of  Republican  Rome, 
— Caesar,  and  Brutus,  and  Cassius,  and  Antony,  and 
Cleopatra,  and  the  other  splendid  figures  of  that  later 
Roman  scene — the  kings,  and  queens,  and  princes,  and 
courtiers  of  barbaric  Denmark,  and  Roman  Britain,  and 
Britain  before  the  Romans, — those  of  Scotland  in  the 
time  of  the  English  Heptarchy, — those  of  England  and 
France  at  the  era  of  Magna  Charta, — all  ranks  of  the 
people  in  almost  every  reign  of  our  subsequent  history 
from  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  to  the  middle  of  the 
sixteenth  century, — not  to  speak  of  Venice,  and 
Verona,  and  Mantua,  and  Padua,  and  Illyria,  and 
Navarre,  and  the  Forest  of  Arden,  and  all  the  other 
towns  and  lands  which  he  has  peopled  for  us  with 
their  most  real  inhabitants. ' '  These  quotations  from 
eminent  authors  fully  sustain  my  position. 

Nevertheless,  Prof.  John  Fiske,  in  a  paper  in  the 
Atlantic  Monthly,  entitled  "Forty  Years  of  the  Bacon- 
Shakespeare  Folly"  meets  the  proposition  that  the 
dramas  ascribed  to  Shakespeare  (( abound  in  evidences 
of  extraordinary  book  learning"  with  "a  flat  denial". 
He  thinks  Shakespeare  possessed  "an  extraordinary 
instinctive  power  of  observation  and  assimilation;" 
that  he  learned  desirable  things  "in  the  country  town 
quite  outside  of  books  and  pedagogues;"  and  picked 
up  knowledge  and  wisdom  from  the  cultured,  learned, 
traveled  and  wise  people  he  met  and  associated  with 
in  lyondon.  It  strikes  me  that  the  claim  that  he  "who 
best  understood  the  language",  he  to  whom  "the  En- 
glish language  was  more  than  to  other  men' '  was  not 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PI.AYS.  213 

book  learned,  and  that  his  proficiency  was  gained  by 
what  he  could  pick  up  on  the  streets  of  lyondon,  or  in 
his  evenings  at  a  tavern,  or  when  on  the  tramp,  is  un- 
reasonable. To  say  that  a  man  who  was  a  great 
worker  in  words,  and  who  had  supreme  dominion  over 
every  form  of  expression — whose  power  of  expression 
shows  infinitely  greater  skill,  sublety  and  cunning 
than  does  Milton — who  has  portrayed  in  his  writings 
the  men  and  manners  of  all  countries  and  all  ages,— 
gained  his  knowledge  and  accomplishments  when 
leading  the  life  of  a  vagabond,  is  absurd.  To  say  that 
the  works  written  by  this  man,  who  was  one  of  the 
three  great  lodestars  that  held  the  English  language 
firm,  the  other  two  being  Milton  and  the  Bible,  show 
no  evidence  of  extraordinary  book  learning,  is  pre- 
posterous. Mr.  Fiske's  flat  denial  makes  it  evident 
that  he  has  not  studied  his  subject. 

Any  Professor  of  Language  or  Rhetoric  knows  and 
will  testify,  that  in  the  case  of  John  Brown,  such  an 
amazing  proficiency  would  argue  ancestral  predis- 
position, felicitous  surroundings  from  babyhood,  early 
and  the  best  instruction,  constant  association  with  cul- 
tivated and  learned  persons,  and  unceasing  study  from 
youth  to  manhood,  and  to  middle  age.  And  there  is 
not  a  Professor  but  will  declare  that  illiterate  or 
semi-educated  John  Jones,  coming  to  the  city  at  the 
age  of  22  or  23,  could  by  no  possibility  attain  full 
command  of  English,  to  say  nothing  of  any  classic  or 
modern  language,  within  seven  or  seventeen  years,  if 
he  gave  every  moment  of  his  life  to  it.  How  many 
persons  have  thought  of  the  labor  and  practice  that 
would  be  required  to  bring  the  vocabulary  of  even  an 


214  SHAKSP^R    NOT 

educated  man  to-day  up  by  1000  words,  with  all  the 
modern  aids  of  dictionaries,  and  other  special  works 
on  language;  and  2000  words  would  be  "as  the  square 
of  the  distance."  When  it  comes  to  21000  words,  as 
Craik  gives  the  Shakespeare  total,  it  is  frightful. 
The  labors  of  Hercules  were  nothing  to  such  a  task. 
That  vocabulary  should  be  decisive,  as  to  the  claims 
of  William  Shaksper.* 

It  must  be  born  in  mind  that  there  were  no  public 
libraries  in  those  days.  As  to  private  ones:  "Any- 
thing like  a  private  library,  even  of  the  smallest 
dimensions,  was  then  of  the  rarest  occurrence,  and 
that  Shakspere  ever  owned  one,  at  any  time  in  his 
life,  is  exceedingly  improbable."  Wilder,  91. 

Books  were  cumbrous  and  costly,  and  prices  made 
them  beyond  the  reach  of  any  but  the  rich.  There 
were  no  encyclopedias,  no  dictionaries,  no  magazines, 
no  newspapers,  no  English  literature.  "All  the  valu- 

*  Wendell,  196,  accounts  for  the  Shakespeare  vocabulary  after 
this  fashion:  "From  the  beginning  of  Elizabethan  literature, 
whoever  had  written  had  been  constantly  playing  on  words  and 
with  them  (as  in  the  badinage  between  Benedick  and  Bea- 
trice). Fantastically  extravagant  as  such  verbal  quibbles  gen- 
erally were,  they  resulted  in  unsurpassed  mastery  of  the  vocabu- 
lary. Combine  such  mastery  of  the  vocabulary  with  an  instinct- 
ive sense  that  words  are  only  symbols  of  actual  thoughts,  and 
the  quibbler  or  punster  becomes  a  wit  of  the  first  quality. 
We  have  seen  that  such  a  sense  of  the  identity  of  word  and 
thought  characterizes  Shakespeare  from  the  beginning."  It  is 
clear  as  crystal  therefore  where  the  butcher's  boy  got  his 
21,000  vocabulary;  first  a  punster,  second  a  quibbler,  third  had 
acquired  during  his  apprenticeship  an  instinctive  sense  that 
words  are  only  symbols  of  thought;  and  now  we  "can  compre- 
hend how  the  milk  came  to  be  in  the  cocoa-nut. 


OF   TH3   Pt,AYS. 

able  books  then  extant  in  all  the  vernacular  languages 
of   Europe  would   hardly  have   filled   a   single  shelf. 

.  It  was  therefore  absolutely  necessary  that  a 
man  should  be  uneducated  or  classically  educated. 

.  The  Latin  was  in  the  i6th  century  all  and 
more  than  the  French  was  in  the  i8th."  Macaulay's 
Essay  on  Bacon. 

I  offer  a  third  argument  as  decisive  as  the  others. 
How  much  of  an  acquaintance  with  the  Bible  could 
the  boy  and  youth  up  to  his  hegira  have  had  ?  '  'The 
Bible  most  commonly  used  during  that  period  was 
either  Parkers,  called  also  the  Bishop's  Bible,  of 
1568,  required  to  be  used  in  the  churches;  or  various 
reprints  of  the  German  Bible  of  1560,  with  short 
marginal  notes,  and  much  used  in  private  families." 
Wordsworth's  Shakespeare  and  The  Bible,  p.  9. 
Neither  of  these  Bibles  was  in  his  father's  house,  nor 
had  he  ever  heard  the  Bible  read  there,  for  nobody 
there  could  read,  and  moreover  none  of  his  relations 
could  read.  Besides,  according  to  Halliwell-Phillipps, 
"there  is  no  doubt  that  John  Shakspere  was  one  of 
the  many  .  .  .  who  were  secretly  attached  to 
the  Catholic  religion:"  and,  again,  ' 'there  is  no  doubt 
that  John  Shakspere  nourished  all  the  while  a  latent 
attachment  for  the  old  religion."  I,  164.  And  "the 
local  tradition  in  the  latter  part  of  the  iyth  century" 
was,  that  William  Shaksper,  as  asserted  by  Vicar 
Davies,  of  Stratford-on-Avon,  within  fifty  years  after 
Shaksper's  death,  "died  a  papist".  Mr.  Phillipps 
fully  credits  this  last  fact.  Now,  Catholic  families 
of  that  age  could  not  abide  the  English  Bible,  as  the 


2l6  SHAKSPKR    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

world  knows.  It  is  safe  to  conclude  that  the  boy 
William  never  looked  between  the  covers  of  any  sort 
of  Bible,  and  never  heard  the  reading  from  a  Bible 
unless  he  occasionally  went  to  Stratford  church,  and 
that  player  Shaksper  saw  no  more  of  the  Bible  than 
the  boy  had  done.  After  reaching  L,ondon  he  had 
his  work  cut  out  for  him,  and  his  time  was  em- 
ployed in  the  service  of  the  theatrical  company, 
he  striving  with  all  his  might  to  reach  a  good 
position,  and  to  make  money.  This  is  evident  be- 
cause he  became  in  due  time  part  owner  of  the 
theater,  and  made  a  great  fortune.  That  he  had  in 
I^ondon  no  more  respect  for  the  seventh  commandment 
than  he  had  in  Stratford  is  plain  from  the  story 
told  by  Manningham  and  hereinafter  recited;  and  a 
man  who  spends  his  life  in  catering  to  the  scum  of 
lyondon  is  not  to  be  supposed  to  be  spending  his  nights 
poring  over  the  Bible,  or  over  classical  literature. 
Bishop  Charles  Wordsworth  has  written  a  book  of 
400  pages  to  show  that  "of  all  the  books  which 
Shakespeare  studied  in  his  own  language,  there  was 
none  with  which  he  was  more  familiar  than  the  Eng- 
lish Bible",  p.  349.  "Shakespeare  has  been  in- 
debted to  Holy  Writ,  not  only  for  poetical  diction  and 
sentiment,  but  for  some  of  the  most  striking  and  sub- 
lime images  which  are  to  be  found  in  his  works."  p. 
310.  He  devotes  45  pages  to  an  examination  of  the 
plays  under  the  heading  "Shakespeare's  Facts  and 
Characters  of  the  Bible";  and  209  pages  to  Shake- 
speare's Principles  and  Sentiments  derived  from  the 
Bible."  This  last  named  chapter  begins  thus:  "I  am 


THE:   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PLAYS.  217 

to  show  how  scriptural,  and  consequently,  how  just 
and  true,  are  the  conceptions  which  Shakespeare  enter- 
tained for  the  being  and  attributes  of  God,  of  his  gen- 
eral and  particular  providence,  of  His  revelation  to  men, 
of  our  duty  towards  Him  and  towards  each  other,  of 
human  life  and  of  human  death,  of  time  and  eternity — 
in  a  word,  of  every  subject  which  it  most  concerns  us 
as  rational  and  responsible  beings  to  conceive  aright;" 
and  it  is  surprising  how  all  these  propositions  are  sub- 
stantiated by  an  analysis  of  the  plays.  Thirty-three 
pages  are  given  to  the  investigation  "Of  the  Poetry  of 
Shakespeare  as  derived  from  the  Bible' ' .  On  p.  345 : 
"Take  the  entire  range  of  English  Literature,  put  to- 
gether our  best  authors,  who  have  written  upon  sub- 
jects not  professedly  religious  or  theological,  and  we 
shall  not  find,  I  believe,  so  much  evidence  of  the  Bible 
having  been  read  and  used,  as  we  have  found -in 
Shakespeare  alone."  On  p.  355:  "There  is  nothing 
of  a  literary  kind  for  which  we  have  greater  reason  to 
thank  the  Giver  of  all  Good,  than  for  a  large  propor- 
tion of  these  works,  excepting  only  the  Book  of  Com- 
mon Prayer,  and  that,  which  has  imparted  alike  to  it 
and  to  them  no  small  share  of  the  surpassing  excel- 
lence, which,  though  in  very  different  ways,  they 
both  possess — His  incomparable,  most  holy  everlasting 
Word." 

On  p.  353,  is  quoted  Mrs.  Montague's  remark,  that 
"we  are  apt  to  consider  Shakespeare  only  as  a  poet; 
but  he  is  certainly  one  of  the  greatest  moral  philoso- 
phers that  ever  lived' ' ;  and,  adds  the  Bishop:  ' 'Whence 
did  he  become  so  ?  I  answer  without  hesitation  , 


SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

he  drew  his  philosophy  from  the  highest  and  purest 
source  of  Moral  truth."  * 

Every  clergyman  knows  what  is  implied  by  an  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  the  Bible;  a  religious  family,  early 
instruction,  a  reverent  disposition,  and  a  fixed  habit  of 
reading  and  study.  A  j  ury  of  clergymen  would  certainly 
find  against  claimant  William  Shaksper.  Indeed,  this 
matter  of  knowledge  of  the  Bible  is  a  crucial  test. 
The  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  whoever  he 
was,  was  brought  up  by  religious  and  Protestant  pa- 
rents, and  studied  the  Bible  both  in  youth  and  man- 
hood. The  language  of  the  Bible  was  as  truly  amal- 
gamated and  consubstantiated  with  his  native  thought 
as  was  the  I/atin  language.  Surely  he  was  at  the 
antipodes  from  pla}^er  Shaksper. 

We  have  seen  therefore  that  by  no  possibility  could 
the  player  have  given  his  time  to  money-making  as  a 
result  of  his  devotion  to  his  theatrical  duties,  vaga- 
bondizing about  the  country  the  greater  part  of  the 
year,  and  at  the  same  time  labored  day  and  night  to 
acquire  a  vast  vocabulary,  labored  to  "amalgamate 
classical  allusions  with  his  native  thought",  besides 

*  Drake  has  said,  in  1817,  of  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare 
plays:  "That  in  a  religious  point  of  view,  he  had  a  claim  to  the 
enjoyment  (of  peace  and  sunshine  of  the  soul),  the  numerous 
passages  in  his  works,  which  breathe  a  spirit  of  pious  gratitude 
and  devotional  rapture,  will  sufficiently  declare.  In  fact,  upon 
the  topic  of  religious  as  well  as  ethic  wisdom,  no  profane  poet 
can  furnish  us  with  a  greater  number  of  just  and  luminous 
aphorisms;  passages  which  dwell  upon  the  heart  and  reach  the 
soul,  for  they  have  issued  from  lips  of  fire,  from  conceptions 
worthy  of  a  superior  nature,  from  feelings  solemn  and  un- 
earthly." 


THE  TESTIMONY  OF  THE  PLAYS. 

the  acquisition  of  several  modern  languages,  and  on 
the  top  of  all,  pass  the  same  day  and  night  over  the 
Bible. 

What  was  the  learning  in  the  law  of  the  author  of 
these  plays  ?  That  he  was  a  professional  lawyer,  all 
lawyers  are  agreed.  Richard  Grant  White,  himself  a 
lawyer,  in  the  Memoirs,  says:  "To  play-writing  the 
needy  and  gifted  young  lawyer  turned  his  hand  at 
that  day  as  he  does  now  to  journalism.  ...  To 
what  are  we  to  attribute  the  fact  that  of  all  the  plays 
that  have  survived  of  those  written  between  1580  and 
1620,  Shakespeare's  are  most  noteworthy  in  this  re- 
spect? For  no  dramatist  of  the  time,  not  even  Beau- 
mont, who  was  a  younger  son  of  a  judge  of  the  Com- 
mon Pleas,  and  who,  after  studying  in  the  Inns  of 
court,  abandoned  law  for  the  drama,  used  legal 
phrases  with  Shakespeare's  readiness  and  exactness. 
And  the  significance  of  this  fact  is  heightened  by  an- 
other,— that  it  is  only  to  the  language  of  the  law  that 
he  exhibits  this  inclination.  .  .  .  Legal  phrases 
flow  from  his  pen  as  part  of  his  vocabulary  and  parcel 
of  his  thought.  ...  It  has  been  suggested  that 
it  was  in  attendance  upon  the  courts  in  London*  that 
he  picked  up  his  legal  vocabulary.  But  this  supposi- 
tion not  only  fails  to  account  for  Shakespeare's  pecu- 
liar freedom  and  exactness  in  the  use  of  that  phrase- 
ology— it  does  not  even  place  him  in  the  way  of  learn- 
ing those  terms  his  use  of  which  is  most  remarkable, 

*  Worse  than  that!  Mr.  Sidney  Lee,  32,  thinks  that  Shak- 
sper's  accurate  use  of  legal  terms  may  be  attributed  in  part  to 
his  observation  of  the  many  legal  processes  in  which  his  father 
was  involved! 


220        SHAKSPKR  NOT  SHAKESPKAR3. 

which  are  not  such  as  he  would  have  heard  at  ordi- 
nary proceedings  at  nisi  prius,  but  such  as  refer  to 
the  tenure  or  transfer  of  real  property, — 'fine  and  re- 
covery', 'statutes  merchant',  'purchase',  'indenture', 
'tenure',  'double  voucher',  'fee  simple',  'fee  farm', 
'remainder',  'reversion',  'forfeiture',  etc.  This  con- 
veyancer's jargon  could  not  have  been  picked  up  by 
hanging  round  the  courts  of  law  in  London  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  ago,  when  suits  as  to  the  title  of 
real  property  were  comparatively  rare.  And  beside, 
Shakespeare  uses  his  law  just  as  freely  in  his  first 
plays,  written  in  his  first  London  years,  as  in  those 
produced  at  a  later  period.  Just  as  exactly,  too;  for 
the  correctness  and  propriety  with  which  these  terms 
are  introduced  have  compelled  the  admiration  of  a 
Chief  Justice  and  a  Lord  Chancellor." 

On  the  other  hand,  Dr.  Wallace,  who  is  distin- 
guished as  a  scientist,  but  is  not  a  lawyer,  conceived 
that  "the  law  courts  of  Westminster  would  offer  ample 
opportunities  for  extending  that  knowledge  of  law 
terms  and  legal  processes  which  he  had  probably  begun 
to  acquire  by  means  of  justices'  sessions  and  coroners' 
inquests  in  his  native  town".  Lord  Campbell  would 
not  seem  to  have  had  so  high  an  opinion  of  justices'  ses- 
sions in,  or  in  the  vicinity  of,  Stratford,  as  has  Dr. 
Wallace,  inasmuch  as  he  suggests  that  "the  characters 
of  Dogberry  and  Verges,  though  apparently  meant  to 
satirize  the  constables,  were  possibly  aimed  as  high  as 
Chairman  at  Quarter  Sessions,  and  even  Judges  of  As- 
size, with  whose  performances  he  (Shaksper)  may 
probably  have  become  acquainted  at  Warwick  or  else- 
where." 


THE;  TESTIMONY  OF  THE  PLAYS.  221 

In  the  same  way,  Dr.  John  Fiske,  a  literary  man 
simply,  claims  that  "the  legal  knowledge  exhibited  in 
the  plays  is  no  more  than  might  readily  have  been  ac- 
quired by  a  man  of  assimilative  genius  associating 
with  lawyers."  But  a  knowledge  of  law  terms  and 
legal  processes  is  not  thus  to  be  picked  up,  parrot-like. 
Lord  Campbell,  "Shakespeare's  Legal  Acquirements", 
New  York,  1859,  tells  us:  "There  is  nothing  so  dan- 
gerous as  for  one  not  of  the  craft  to  tamper  with  our 
freemasonry."  Also:  "Let  a  non-professional  man, 
however  acute,  presume  to  talk  law,  or  to  draw  illus- 
trations from  legal  science  in  discussing  other  subjects, 
and  he  will  speedily  fall  into  some  laughable  ab- 
surdity." A  paragraph  which  I  commend  to  Mr. 
Fiske' s  attention,  if  he  is  ever  tempted  to  put  to  the  test 
his  theory  of  the  readiness  with  which  he  could  dis- 
course on  law,  or  write  on  law  cases,  if  he  had  the 
mind  to.  Lord  Campbell  proceeds:  "These  jests — 
(Comedy  of  Errors) — show  the  author  to  be  very  fa- 
miliar with  some  of  the  most  abstruse  proceedings  in 
English  Jurisdiction. ' '  '  'We  find  in  several  of  the  his- 
tories Shakspeare's  fondness  for  law  terms,  and  it  is 
still  more  remarkable  that  whenever  he  indulges  this 
propensity  he  -uniformly  lays  down  good  law."  "The 
indictment  in  which  Lord  Say  was  arraigned  in  Act 
IV,  scene  7,  2nd  Henry  VI,  seems  drawn  by  no  inex- 
perienced hand.  .  .  .  It  is  quite  certain  that  the 
drawer  of  this  indictment  must  have  had  some  ac- 
quaintance with  the  'Crown  Circuit  Companion',  and 
must  have  had  a  full  and  accurate  knowledge  of  that 
rather  obscure  and  intricate  subject,  'Felony  and  Bene- 
fit of  Clergy'."  "While  novelists  and  dramatists  are 


222  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

constantly  making  mistakes  as  to  the  laws  of  marriage, 
of  wills  and  inheritance,  to  Shakespeare's  law,  lavishly 
as  he  expounds  it,  there  can  neither  be  demurrer,  nor 
bill  of  exceptions,  nor  writ  of  error."  p.  154. 

Again,  he  quotes  in  full  the  46th  Sonnet  and  says: 
"I  need  not  go  further  than  this  sonnet,  which  is  so 
intensely  legal  in  its  language  and  imagery,  that  with- 
out a  considerable  knowledge  of  English  forensic  pro- 
cedure it  cannot  be  fully  understood.  A  lover  being 
supposed  to  have  made  a  conquest  of  (/.  e.,  to  have 
gained  by  purchase]  his  mistress,  his  EYE  and  his 
HEART  holding  as  joint  tenants,  have  a  contest  as  to 
how  she  is  to  be  partitioned  between  them — each 
moiety  then  to  be  held  in  several ty.  There  are  reg- 
ular pleadings  in  the  suit,  the  HEART  being  repre- 
sented as  Plaintiff  and  the  EYE  as  Defendant.  At 
last,  issue  is  joined  on  what  the  one  affirms  and  the 
other  denies.  Now  a  jury,  (in  the  nature  of  an  in- 
quest) is  to  be  empanelled  to  decide,  and  by  their 
verdict  to  apportion  between  the  litigating  parties  the 
subject-matter  to  be  decided.  The  jury  fortunately 
are  unanimous,  and  after  due  deliberation,  find  for  the 
EYE  in  respect  of  the  lady's  outward  form,  and  for  the 
HEART  in  respect  of  her  inward  love.  Surely  Sonnet 
46  smells  as  potently  of  the  attorney's  office  as  any  of 
the  stanzas  penned  by  Lord  Kenyon  while  an  attorney's 
clerk  in  Wales'". 

Lord  Campbell  surmised  that  the  young  Shaksper 
might  have  been  an  attorney's  clerk  up  to  the  time  he 
fled  to  London.  " Great  as  is  the  knowledge  of  law 
which  Shakespeare's  writings  display,  and  familiar  as 
he  appears  to  have  been  with  all  its  forms  and  pro- 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PI.AYS.  223 

ceedings,  the  whole  of  this  would  be  accounted  for  if 
for  some  years  he  had  occupied  a  desk  in  the  office  of 
a  country  attorney  in  good  business — attending  ses- 
sions and  assizes — keeping  leets  and  law  days — and 
perhaps  being  sent  up  to  the  metropolis  in  term  time 
to  conduct  suits  before  the  L,ord  Chancellor,  or  the 
Superior  Courts  at  Westminster."  But,  he  suggests, 
if  this  were  so,  '  'positive  and  irrefragable  evidence  in 
Shakespeare's  own  handwriting  might  have  been  forth- 
coming to  establish  it.  Not  having  been  actually  en- 
rolled as  an  attorney,  neither  the  records  of  the  local 
court  at  Stratford  nor  of  the  superior  courts  at  West- 
minster would  present  his  name  as  being  concerned  in 
any  suit  as  an  attorney;  but  it  might  reasonably  have 
been  expected  that  there  would  have  been  deeds  or 
wills  witnessed  by  him  still  extant;  and  after  a  very 
diligent  search  none  such  can  be  discovered." 

In  the  forty  years  since  L<ord  Campbell's  book  was 
published  the  diligent  search  has  not  abated.  Every 
old  deed  or  will,  to  say  nothing  of  other  legal  papers, 
dated  during  the  period  of  William  Shaksper's  youth, 
has  been  scrutinized  over  half  a  dozen  shires,  and  not 
one  signature  of  the  young  man  has  been  found.  By 
all  recent  authors  the  attorney's  clerk  theory  has  been 
passed  in  silence. 

F.  F.  Heard,  also  a  lawyer,  in  "Shakespeare  as  a 
Lawyer",  says:  "The  Comedy  of  Errors  shows  that 
Shakespeare  was  very  familiar  with  some  of  the  most 
refined  of  the  principles  of  the  science  of  special 
pleading,  a  science  which  contains  the  quintessence  of 
the  law".  43.  Mr.  Heard  mentions  a  species  of 
traverse,  used  by  special  pleaders  when  the  record  was 


224  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

in  L,atin,  and  known  as  a  "special  traverse",  referred 
to  in  2nd  Henry  IV,  Act  5:  "The  subtlety  of  its  text- 
ure and  the  total  dearth  of  explanation  in  all  the  re- 
ports and  treatises  extant  in  the  time  of  Shakespeare 
with  respect  to  its  principle,  seems  to  justify  the  con- 
clusion that  he  must  have  attained  a  knowledge  of  it 
from  actual  practice."  43.  A  jury  of  lawyers  would 
certainly  find  that  such  familiarity  with  law  indicates 
deep  study  and  long  practice,  and  that  by  no  pos- 
sibility could  John  Doe,  coming  as  a  half  educated  lad 
to  London,*  attain  it  in  a  score  of  years  under  the 
most  favorable  conditions. 

As  to  the  medical  knowledge  of  the  author  of  these 
plays,  Dr.  J.  C.  Bucknill,  in  "Psychology  of  Shake- 
speare", London,  1859,  says,  that  the  author  had 
"paid  an  amount  of  attention  to  subjects  of  medical 
interest  scarcely,  if  at  all,  inferior  to  that  which  has 
served  as  the  basis  of  the  learned  and  ingenious  argu- 
ment that  this  intellectual  king  of  men  had  devoted 
seven  good  }^ears  of  his  life  to  the  practice  of  law. ' ' 
He  is  "surprised  and  astonished  at  the  extent  and 
exactness  of  the  physiological  knowledge  displayed" 
in  these  plays,  and  concluded  that  abnormal  conditions 

*  At  a  meeting  of  the  Professional  Woman's  League,  held  in 
New  York,  May,  1894,  the  New  York  Tribune  reported  that  the 
question  was  debated:  "Who  wrote  the  works  ascribed  to 
Shakespeare",  and  able  arguments  in  favor  of  Bacon  and 
of  player  Shaksper  were  made.  The  defender  of  the  player 
theory  took  the  ground  that  the  author  was  not  Bacon,  because 
Bacon  was  a  lawyer,  whereas  "no  more  law  is  shown  in  the 
plays  than  could  have  been  acquired  by  superficial  reading." 
A  good  illustration  of  the  "smattering",  ' 'hanging  around  the 
courts",  and  "picking  up"  theory. 


THE   TESTIMONY  OF  THE   PLAYS.  225 

of  mind  had  attracted  Shakespeare's  diligent  observa- 
tion, and  had  been  his  favorite  study. 

He  finds  instances  which  amount  "not  merely  to 
evidence  but  to  proof,  that  Shakespeare  had  read 
widely  in  medical  literature" .  Dr.  Field  says:  "Shake- 
speare paid  considerable  attention  to  medicine,  and 
has  furnished  some  of  the  finest  specimens  of  the 
medical  character,  that  have  ever  been  drawn  by  any 
writer.  His  Cerimon,  in  Pericles,  is  a  most  noble  one. 
.  .  .  Macbeth  supplies  us  with  a  wise  member  of 
the  profession.  ...  In  Lear  also  appears  a  phy- 
sician worthy  of  the  name.  The  last  scene  of  the 
4th  Act  shows  his  excellent  skill  in  treating  Lear's 
case.  Shakespeare 's  maladies  are  many,  and  the 
symptoms  very  well  defined.  .  .  .  Diseases  of 
the  nervous  system  seem  to  have  been  a  favorite  study, 
especially  insanity,  Lear,  Timon,  and  Hamlet  being 
excellent  examples.*  "Medical  Thoughts  of  Shake- 
peare,"  1885. 

Sir  Charles  Bell,  in  "Principles  of  Surgery,"  II,  557, 
says:  "My  readers  will  smile  to  see  me  quoting 
Shakespeare  among  the  physicians  and  theologists; 
but  not  one  of  all  their  tribe,  populous  though  it  be, 

*A  letter  in  the  New  York  Sun,  of  I3th  Nov.  1898,  quotes  a 
St.  Louis  surgeon,  "who  has  made  a  special  study  of  Brain 
Surgery,  thus:  "Of  course,  Shakespeare  remains  supreme  in 
his  portraiture  of  one  form  of  insanity.  He  was  far  in  advance 
of  the  medical  knowledge  of  his  time.  No  modern  alienist  has 
ever  presented  Hamlet's  type  of  mental  disorder  so  accurately. 
So  exact  and  comprehensive  is  this  product  of  the  insight  of 
genius,  that  Maudsley  prefers  it  to  any  other  as  the  basis  of  a 
study — prefers  it  to  Bsquirol's  record  of  actual  cases  of  lunacy 
in  the  Paris  hospital  for  the  insane". 


226  SHAKSPER    NOT 

could  describe  so  exquisitely  the  marks  of  apoplexy, 
conspiring  with  the  struggles  for  life,  and  the  agonies 
of  suffocation  to  deform  the  countenance  of  the  dead; 
so  curiously  does  our  poet  present  to  our  conception 
all  the  signs  from  which  it  might  be  inferred  that  the 
good  Duke  Humphrey  had  died  a  violent  death." 

"And  not  only  in  the  general  knowledge  of  a  lawyer 
and  a  physician,  but  what  we  call  in  these  days  'medi- 
cal jurisprudence',  the  man  who  wrote  the  play  of 
Henry  VI  seems  to  have  been  an  expert' ' ,  according 
to  David  Paul  Brown,  the  highest  of  authorities. 
Morgan,  215.  The  player  Shaksper  would  fare  no 
better  in  the  hands  of  a  jury  of  physicians,  than  of 
lawyers. 


The  poet  was  not  only  a  great  poet,  but  '  'myriad 
minded' ' ,  and  familiar  with  philosophy  from  Plato  and 
Aristotle  down,  according  to  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge. 

Dr.  Furnivall  says  of  Gervinus'  Studies  of  Shake- 
speare: "He  sets  before  us  his  view  of  the  poet  and 
his  works  as  a  whole,  and  rightly  claims  for  him  the 
highest  honor  as  the  greatest  dramatic  artist,  the  rarest 
judge  of  men  and  human  affairs,  the  noblest  moral 
teacher  that  literature  has  yet  known." 

Schlegel  said  of  Shakespeare:  "He  unites  in  his 
soul  the  utmost  elevation  and  the  utmost  depth;  the 
world  of  spirits  and  nature  have  laid  all  their  treasures 
at  his  feet;  in  strength  a  demi-god,  in  profundity  of 
view  a  prophet,  in  all-seeing  wisdom  a  guardian  spirit 
of  a  higher  order,  he  lowers  himself  to  mortals  as  if 


THK   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PI.AYS.  227 


unconscious  of  his  superiority,  and  is  as  open  and  un- 
assuming as  a  child." 

"There  is  no  quality  in  the  human  mind,  there  is  no 
class  of  topics,  there  is  no  realm  of  thought,  in  which 
he  has  not  soared  or  descended,  and  none  in  which  he 
has  not  said  the  commanding  word.  All  men  are  im- 
pressed, in  proportion  to  their  own  advancement  in 
thought,  by  the  genius  of  Shakespeare;  and  the  great- 
est mind  values  him  most."  R.  W.  Emerson. 

According  to  Mr.  Ruggles,  he  was  thoroughly  fa- 
miliar with  Bacon's  Philosophy,  and  the  aim  of  Mr. 
Ruggles  valuable  book  is  to  prove  this  by  an  analysis 
of  eleven  of  the  plays. 

'  'The  writer  of  these  plays  is  generally  thought  of 
first  as  a  poet,  and  then  as  a  philosopher;  but  perhaps 
if  he  should  be  regarded  as  a  philosopher  first  and 
then  a  poet,  that  is,  a  philosopher  who  used  a  creative 
imagination,  and  transcendent  power  of  fancy  and 
language  for  the  purpose  of  clothing  in  poetical  form 
the  abstract  principles  of  his  science  of  man,  we  might 
give  a  nearer  guess  at  his  meaning."  Ruggles,  159. 

"He  was  a  man  of  bold  and  innovating  genius  in- 
deed who  presumed  to  question  the  authority  of 
Aristotle  in  either  logic  or  art.  But  Bacon  did  the 
one  and  'Shakespeare'  did  the  other".  Id.,  1.  c. 

"It  is  observable  that  in  the  illustrations  of  differ- 
ent branches  of  learning,  the  poet  for  the  most  part 
follows  the  divisions  of  the  sciences  laid  down  by 
Bacon,  but  not  always,  for  he  sometimes  takes  his 
rules  from  Aristotle,  but  this  is  apparently  only 
in  cases  where  Bacon  is  silent  in  the  points  involved. ' ' 
Id.,  Preface,  4. 


228        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

"It  so  happens  that  in  the  later  plays,  and  particu- 
larly in  those  written  toward  the  close  of  the  drama- 
tist's career,  the  apparent  similitudes  point  not  simply 
to  the  theoretical  views,  but  to  the  system  and  techni- 
calities of  the  Baconian  Philo.sophy;  they  seem  to 
reach  the  classification  and  subdivisions  of  the  subject 
of  which  they  treat."  Id.,  Intro.,  4. 

"The  plan  of  Bacon's  Natural  History  and  its  pecu- 
liar classification  and  nomenclature  as  well  as  its  use  in 
furnishing  materials  for  induction,  were  of  course  en- 
tirely original  with  him;  yet  it  is  a  singular  fact  that 
in  Cymbeline,  the  topics  of  the  play — and  by  topics  is 
here  meant  [those  general  heads  under  which  the  dif- 
ferent subjects  of  the  dialogue  can  be  classified — 
coincide  with  the  main  heads  and  division  of  Bacon's 
plan  of  a  History."  Ib.  45. 

"By  the  following  analysis  of  the  Winter's  Tale  it 
is  intended  to  show  that  of  the  three  leading  divisions 
made  by  Bacon  of  Learning  into  History,  Poetry  and 
Philosophy,  the  play  illustrates  Poetry  as  an  art,  and 
more  particularly  dramatic  art  as  practiced  by  'Shake- 
speare'. .  .  .  This  play  is  therefore  the  opposite 
and  counterpart  of  Cymbeline;  in  which  is  represented 
the  Method  of  Induction  according  to  Bacon."  Id. ,  86. 

"The  foregoing  summary  .  .  .  is  perhaps  suf- 
ficient to  show  the  similarity  between  Bacon's  sug- 
gestions and  the  poet's  practice".  Id.,  158. 

'  'Othello  therefore  apparently  covers  the  whole  ground 
of  Bacon's  doctrine  of  'the  platform  or  essence  of  good', 
and  is  a  'living  model'  which  shows  in  its  characters, 
their  actions,  thoughts,  opinions,  and  sentiments,  the 
practical  application  of  abstract  and  scientific  truths — 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PI<AYS.  22Q 

thus  clothing  the  dry  bones  of  philosophy  with  the 
flesh  and  blood  of  dramatic  life."  Id.,  629. 

"Shakespeare's genius  seems  always  conscious  of  its 
work  and  its  methods,  and  although  by  no  effort  can 
we  go  under  his  fundamental  conceptions,  even  if  we 
have  the  good  fortune  of  reaching  them,  yet  the  struc- 
ture of  his  pieces  shows  that  these  conceptions  were  ob- 
tained by  study  and  meditation,  and  were  the  fruits  of  a 
mind  that  had  fathomed  to  the  bottom  every  subject  of 
which  it  treats;  consequently  he  could  present  such 
subjects  with  all  their  relations  in  plays  which  are  the 
product  of  both  art  and  philosophy.  .  .  .  His 
plays  are  not  nature,  nor  copies  of  nature,  nor  in- 
tended to  be  such;  but  art,  which  makes  its  own 
world  in  imitation  no  doubt  of  nature,  but  with  an 
intentional  difference,  and  under  artificial  forms  and 
arbitrary  conditons. "  Id. ,  434. 

And  Mr.  Ruggles  declares,  p.  3,  Introd.,  in  effect 
his  belief  that  there  is  some  connection  between  the 
plays  and  the  Baconian  Philosophy,  and  that  between 
Bacon  and  Shakespeare  there  existed  some  personal 
relation,  "the  nature  of  which,  however,  must  be  left 
to  conjecture,  since  neither  history  nor  tradition 
makes  any  mention  of  them." 

"(The  play  of  Julius  Caesar)  shows  that  Shake- 
speare possessed  the  gift  of  eloquence  to  a  degree  that 
has  never  been  equalled.  Besides  all  else  that  it  is,  it 
is  the  play  of  poetic  eloquence  .  .  .  the  consum- 
mate power  of  oratory.  There  are  no  less  than  three 
deliberate  orations  in  it,  for  besides  those  of  Antony 
and  Brutus,  there  is  the  splendid  speech  addressed  by 
Marcellus  to  the  rabble — a  piece  of  invective  as  fine  as 


230  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

anything  of  the  kind  in  our  literature.  Antony's 
speech  remains,  of  course,  the  greatest  effort  in  per- 
suasive oratory  ever  penned.  There  is  not  a  line  in  it 
which  even  Erskine — that  angel-tongued  persuader  of 
juries — could  have  bettered."  Spectator,  (London) 
Jan.  29,  1898. 

Is  it  conceivable  that  William  Shaksper,  if  he  was 
possessed  of  the  gift  of  eloquence,  a  gift  which  cannot 
be  concealed,  which  is  irrepressible,  should  not  have 
employed  it  on  many  occasions,  and  that  where  there 
were  ears  to  hear  and  eyes  to  see;  that  he  should  not 
have  spoken  one  living  word  of  any  description;  that 
not  one  contemporary  should  have  discovered  and  re- 
marked upon  his  oratorical  powers?  Jonson  enu- 
merated the  eloquent  men  of  his  age,  and  specified  one 
among  them  as  surpassing  all  that  Greece  or  Rome 
could  boast.  That  should  have  been  William  Shak- 
sper, if  he  wrote  the  Shakespeare  plays,  but  Jonson 
had  no  such  man  in  his  view,  and  failed  to  mention 
Shaksper  in  the  connection.  On  another  day  he  did 
report  this  Shaksper  as  loquacious  to  a  degree  often 
laughable.  Eloquence  is  one  thing,  and  loquacity 
quite  another. 

Goethe  says:  "He  (Shakespeare)  is  not  a  theatrical 
poet;  he  never  thought  of  the  stage;  it  was  too  narrow 
for  his  great  mind,  nay,  the  whole  visible  world  was 
too  narrow.  .  .  .  He  is  a  great  psychologist,  and 
we  learn  from  his  pieces  the  secrets  of  human 
nature. ' ' 

(On  the  other  hand  Halliwell-Phillipps,  to  suit  the 
facts  of  the  life  and  environment  of  player  Shaksper, 
says,  I,  114:  "There  is  no  evidence  that  Shaksper 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   P^AYS.  231 

wrote  at  any  period  of  his  life  without  a  constant 
reference  to  the  immediate  effect  of  his  dramas  upon 
the  theatrical  public  of  his  own  day;  and  it  may 
reasonably  be  suspected  that  there  is  not  one  of  them 
which  is  the  result  of  an  express  or  cherished  literary 
design. ' '  Phillipps  claims  that  it  was  the  opinion  of 
contemporaries  of  William  Shaksper  that  he  wrote  the 
Plays  '  'without  effort  and  without  design  and  by  in- 
spiration", and  evidently  is  himself  of  the  same  way 
of  thinking.  That  would  mean  that  when  he  took  a 
pen  in  hand,  the  words  flowed  from  the  nibs  without 
intention  or  knowledge  on  his  part;  in  other  words  he 
was  a  mere  unconscious  medium,  through  which  some 
external  agency  manifested  itself  after  the  manner  of 
the  rapping  spirits  we  have  all  heard  of.)" 

John  Owens  has  written  a  book  on  "The  Five 
Great  Skeptical  Dramas  of  History",  I/mdon  and 
New  York,  1896;  in  which  he  treats  of  Hamlet;  one 
of  the  five,  that  "wonderful  tragedy".  (In  Tenny- 
son's opinion  also,  Hamlet  is  the  greatest  creation  in 
literature. )  Owens  finds  no  evidence  of  the  play  hav- 
ing been  thrown  off  as  a  pot-boiler,  or  to  fill  William 
Shaksper 's  theaters  and  pockets.  "Shakespeare  him- 
self is  Hamlet.  .  .  .  Hamlet  is  a  victim  of  in- 
finity, of  thought  and  reflection  so  far  enlarged  that 
their  sphere  has  become  illimitable.  He  falls  a  prey 
first  to  his  own  genius  for  profound  meditation,  his 
subtilizing  and  refining  instincts,  his  invincible  prefer- 
ence for  the  ideal  and  abstract,  as  compared  with  the 
real  and  concrete".  Can  this  be  the  uneducated  youth 
of  Halliwell-Phillipps,  "almost  devoid  of  accomplish- 
ments when  he  entered  lyondon",  or  the  Shaksper  of 


232  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

Rolfe  and  Fiske,  who  "had  little  L,atin,  perhaps  none", 
when  a  lack  of  L,atin  was  a  lack  of  all  education  ? 

"A  man  of  his  profound  thought,  and  vivid  imagi- 
nation, must  occasionally  have  mac^e  incursions,  or  at- 
tempted surveys  of  that  mysterious  and  fathomless 
unknown  by  which  our  mundane  existence  is  meta- 
physically as  well  as  physically  environed.  He 
undoubtedly  paid  repeated  visits  to  the  shore  of  the 
ocean  of  transcendental  being, ' '  etc. 

"He  was  a  judicial,  equilibrating,  suspensive 
thinker.  .  .  .  He  saw  truth,  reason,  as  well  as 
the  springs  of  human  conduct.  .  .  .  This  was  the 
secret  of  what  Coleridge  terms  his  'myriad-minded- 
ness',  as  well  as  of  his  intense  humanity.  .  .  . 
Philosophy,  theology,  ethics,  politics,  science  —  in 
short,  all  subject-matters  of  human  concernment — are 
discussed  by  his  characters.  .  .  .  All  conceivable 
types  of  humanity  Shakespeare  has  vivisected  and  de- 
scribed, and  has  well  nigh  exhausted  the  attributes  of 
each."  Can  this  be  the  man  of  whom  Prof.  Wendell 
says:  "Nothing  more  surprises  such  readers  of  Shake- 
speare as  are  not  practical  men  of  letters,  than  the 
man's  apparent  learning?"  Also,  can  it  be  the  same 
Shaksper  who  for  twenty-five  years  went  in  and  out 
before  all  that  was  worthless  and  vile  of  London  ? 

"That  Shakespeare  was  fully  convinced  of  the  gen- 
eral advantages  of  knowledge  over  ignorance,  is  a 
truth  needing  no  demonstration;  it  is  impressed  on 
every  page  of  his  works.  .  .  .  Ignorance  is  a 
monster,  and  'barbarous',  'dark',  'barren',  'unweigh- 
ing.'  "  Was  this  the  Shaksper  who  for  years  left 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PLAYS.  233 

wife  and  children  to  shift  for  themselves,  and  whose 
daughters  grew  up  in  illiteracy  ? 

"Hamlet  is  before  all  things  a  thinker,  a  profoundly 
philosophic  reasoner.  .  .  .  Shakespeare  had  evi- 
dently studied  profoundly  the  Hamletic  type  of  in- 
tellect. He  had  acquired  his  intimate  knowledge  of  it 
just  as  Goethe  had  learned  Faust,  from  introspection." 
Mr.  Owens  also  says  that  the  best  Shakesperian  critics 
seem  now  agreed  that  the  earliest  form  of  Hamlet,  the 
1603  Quarto,  was  indited  by  William  Shakespeare, 
possibly  about  1585-7;  which  would  be  when  Will- 
iam Shaksper  was  vending  mutton  from  the  tail  of  a 
cart.  Strange  occupation  for  a  Hamletic  type  of  in- 
tellect! 

"Goethe  created  Faust.  .  .  .  but  this  creation 
with  all  its  excellence  is  entirely  inferior  in  uniformity 
and  artistic  finish  to  all  the  highest  products  of  the 
Shakespearean  drama,  e.  g.,  Hamlet,  Othello  and 
Lear. ' '  True  it  is,  as  I  have  said  before,  the  world  is 
just  now  coming  to  comprehend  the  plays  of  Shake- 
speare. Surely  they  were  never  written  for  the 
amusement  of  the  penny  knaves  who  pestered  the  the- 
aters, as  Richard  Grant  White  and  John  Fiske  seem 
to  think,  and  as  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  ''The 
People  for  Whom  Shakespeare  Wrote",  fancies. 

And  now  comes  Prof.  B.  K.  Warner,  of  Tulane 
University,  in  his  "English  History  in  Shakespeare 
Plays",  New  York,  1895,  P-  321;  written  to  show 
that  the  author  of  these  plays  "understood  English 
History  as  no  other  man  has  ever  understood  it,  and 
has  pictured  it  so,  that  in  the  words  of  S.  T.  Coleridge 


234  SHAKSPKR   NOT 

the  people  have  taken  their  history  from  Shakespeare 
as  they  have  taken  their  theology  from  Milton." 

"L,ord  Bacon  exactly  defines  in  this  spirit  the  value 
of  the  historical  drama,  and  hence  the  function  of 
Shakespeare  as  a  teacher  of  history.  'Dramatic  poetry 
is  like  history  made  visible,  and  is  an  image  of  action 
past,  as  though  they  were  present'  ".  (Is  it  not  re- 
markable that  so  many  of  the  scholars  who  are 
wandering  in  the  forest  of  Arden  should  fancy  they 
hear  the  footsteps  of  Francis  Bacon!) 

"Heine  fairly  estimates  and  sums  up  the  historical 
value  of  these  plays:  'The  great  Briton  is  not  only  a 
poet  but  an  historian;  he  wields  not  only  the  dagger 
of  Melpomene,  but  the  still  sharper  stylus  of  Clio. 
In  this  respect  he  is  like  the  earliest  writers  of  history, 
who  also  knew  no  difference  between  poetry  and  his- 
tory .  .  .  but  who  enlivened  truth  with  song, 
and  in  whose  song  was  heard  only  the  voice  of 
truth.'  " 

'  'So  writing,  Shakespeare  taught  history  as  it  has 
never  been  taught  since — not  in  tables,  nor  dates,  nor 
statistics — nor  in  records  of  revolts  or  details  of  battle- 
fields; but  history  in  its  highest  and  purest  form — the 
uncovering  of  those  springs  of  action  in  which  great 
natural  movements  take  their  rise. ' '  Strange  that  Mr. 
Warner  should  not  see  how  utterly  impossible  it  is  that 
all  this  learning  and  philosophy  should  have  come  from 
Stratford.  For  myself,  I  believe  that  Mr.  Warner's 
horse  knows  as  much  of  history  and  philosophy  as 
William  Shaksper,  player,  theater-proprietor,  and  re- 
tired millionaire,  ever  knew. 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PI^AYS.  235 

He  was  a  physicist  and  natural  philosopher.  '  'The 
diction  of  the  play  All's  Well  that  Ends  Well  is  largely 
infused  with  terms  borrowed  from  mechanics,  engineer- 
ing and  military  art."  Ruggles,  322. 


Judge  Madden,  of  Dublin,  has  written  "A  Study  of 
Shakespeare  and  Elizabethan  Sport",  1897,  of  which 
the  Spectator,  November  6,  1897,  said  that  it  shows 
that  Shakespeare  was  "a  past-master  of  the  language 
of  falconry.  .  .  Hardly  less  curious  than  the  innu- 
merable proofs  of  Shakespeare's  accuracy  in  this 
matter  are  the  cases  adduced  of  inaccuracy  in  modern 
writers;  as,  for  example,  Scott  and  Tennyson."  Now, 
falconry  was  peculiarly  the  sport  of  gentlemen,  and 
what  was  a  butcher  boy  and  a  tramp  player  to  know 
of  that  matter  ?  It  is  one  more  proof  that  William 
Shaksper,  of  Stratford,  was  not  the  William  Shake- 
speare of  these  plays. 


The  writer  of  these  plays  was  also  an  adept  in  the 
science  of  Heraldry.  Greene,  "Shakespeare  and  the 
Emblem  Writers' ' ,  says:  "It  is  to  be  accepted  as  a  fact 
that  he  was  acquainted  with  the  works  of  the  emblem 
writers,  and  profited  so  much  from  them,  as  to  be  able, 
whenever  the  occasion  demanded,  to  invent,  and  most 
fittingly  illustrate,  devices  of  his  own;  as,  for  example, 
the  sixth  knight's  device  and  the  motto  in  Pericles; 
and  in  the  casket  scene  of  the  Merchant  of  Venice" . 
Reed,  261.  Do  we  go  to  circus  clowns  for  instruction 
in  Heraldry? 


236  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPKARE. 

He  was  an  enthusiast  in  horticulture.  In  fact, 
'  'there  is  nothing  in  history  or  politics,  nothing  in  art 
or  science,  nothing  in  physics  or  metaphysics,  that  is 
not  sooner  or  later  taxed  for  his  illustration.  What- 
ever we  have  gathered  of  thought  or  knowledge  and 
of  experience,  confronted  with  his  marvelous  page, 
shrinks  to  a  mere  foot-note."  lyowell,  170.  Yet  John 
Fiske,  for  the  life  of  him,  cannot  see  that  the  Shake- 
speare plays  "abound  with  evidences  of  scholarship 
or  learning  of  the  sort  that  is  gathered  from  profound 
and  accurate  study  of  books. ' '  He  cannot  indeed,  and 
therein  plainly  differs  from  I/) well. 

Mr.  Edward  W.  Naylor  has  written  '  'Shakespeare  and 
Music",  (The  Temple  Shakespeare  Manuals),  1896, 
showing  that  the  writer  of  the  plays  was  familiar  with 
the  popular  music  of  his  time,  and  an  adept  in  the  sci- 
ence of  music.  "It  is  scarcely  a  matter  of  surprise  that 
the  musical  student  should  look  to  Shakespeare  for 
music,  and  find  it  treated  of  from  several  points  of 
view,  completely  and  accurately."  In  Elizabeth's 
time,  music  formed  apart  of  every  gentleman's  educa- 
tion. "In  the  1 6th  and  iyth  centuries,  a  practical 
acquaintance  with  music  was  a  regular  part  of  the  ed- 
ucation of  both  sovereign,  gentlemen  of  rank,  and  the 
higher  middle  class".  .  .  .  "In  Elizabeth's  reign, 
it  was  the  custom  of  a  lady's  guests  to  sing  unaccom- 
panied music  from  'parts'  after  supper,  and  the  inabil- 
ity to  take  a  'part'  was  liable  to  remark  from  the  rest 
of  the  company;  and,  indeed,  such  inability  cast  doubt 
on  the  person's  having  any  title  to  education  at  all." 
.  "It  is  plain  that  Shakespeare's  gentlemen 
were  able  to  sing  from  the  printed  page  ( 'prick  song' ) 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PlyAYS.  237 

as  well  as  to  'descant' ,  that  is,  to  improvise  a  counter- 
point on  a  given  melody;  that  he  was  familiar  with 
the  construction  and  the  manipulation  of  the  musical 
instruments  commonly  used  in  his  day,  (the  cornet, 
the  tabor-pipe,  the  recorder,  the  viol  and  lute,  the  vir- 
ginal) ;  and  he  knew  the  characteristics  of  the  dances 
which  were  then  in  vogue. "  Notice  of  "Shakespeare 
and  Music",  in  New  York  Tribune,  June  i6th,  1896. 
By  all  which,  it  appears  that  the  writer  of  the  plays 
was  educated  in  music  as  became  a  gentleman  of  rank, 
or  one  of  the  higher  middle  class. 

He  had  traveled  extensively  in  France  and  Italy. 
The  scene  of  his  first  play,  Love's  Labour's  Lost,  is 
laid  in  southern  France.  No  one  can  explore  Venice, 
Padua,  Verona,  Milan,  and  other  Italian  cities,  with 
the  plays  in  hand,  and  not  feel  assured  that  the  writer 
or  writers  who  were  concealed  under  the  name  "Will- 
iam Shakespeare' '  had  been  in  these  cities,  and  knew 
them  as  only  a  resident  could.  "So  strange  and  so 
strong  is  the  power  of  fiction  over  truth,  in  Venice, 
as  everywhere  else,  that  Portia,  Emilia,  Cassio,  An- 
tonio, and  lago,  appear  to  have  been  more  real  here 
(£  e.y  to  the  traveler  in  Venice)  than  of  the  men  and 
women  of  real  life.  It  is  a  curious  fact,  reported  by 
F.  K.  Elze,  and  quoted  by  Mr.  H.  H.  Furness,  in  his 
Appendix  to  the  Merchant  of  Venice,  that  at  the 
time  of  the  action  of  that  drama,  Shakespeare's  own 
day,  there  was  living  in  Padua  a  Professor  of  the 
University,  whose  characteristics  fully  and  entirely 
corresponded  with  all  the  qualities  of  'old  Bellario', 
with  all  the  requisites  of  the  play".  Lawrence  Hut- 
ton,  in  Harper's  Magazine,  July,  1896. 


238  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

Mrs.  Dall  says,  p.  35:  "My  own  conviction  is,  that 
he  spent  the  period  between  1587  and  1592,  after  some 
apprenticeship  at  the  theater,  chiefly  on  the  continent. 
This  conviction  is  founded  on  the  internal  evidence  of 
the  plays." 

George  A.  Sala,  in  his  Life  and  Adventures,  writes: 
"Wandering  from  Milan  to  Mantua,  and  from  Padua 
to  Verona,  and  Vicenza,  there  grew  up  in  me,  day 
after  day,  a  stronger  and  stronger  impression — an  im- 
pression that  has  become  unalterable  conviction — that 
Shakespeare  knew  every  rood  of  ground,  and  every 
building  in  the  cities  in  which  he  had  laid  the  scenes 
of  the  Merchant  of  Venice,  The  Two  Gentlemen  of 
Verona,  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  and  of  the  Taming  of 
the  Shrew.  ...  It  was  the  constant  study  of 
ostensibly  petty  details  in  Shakespeare's  Italian  plays 
that  led  me  to  the  full  and  fast  belief  that  he  was  fa- 
miliar from  actual  experience  and  observation  with  the 
northern  Italy  of  his  time. ' ' 

George  Brandes'  Critical  Study  of  Shakespeare, 
1898,  finds  abundant  evidence  in  the  plays  that  the 
author  had  traveled  in  Italy  and  elsewhere. 

In  the  Contemporary  Review,  Jan.,  1896,  is  a  paper 
byJanStefansson,  entitled  "Shakespeare  at  Elsinore", 
in  which  the  writer  '  'wishes  to  point  out  that  the  au- 
thor of  Hamlet  shows  in  this  drama  a  correct  knowl- 
edge of  Danish  names,  words,  and  customs  of  his 
time — nay,  a  local  knowledge  of  the  royal  castle  of 
Elsinore,  which  he  could  not  have  derived  from  books, 
and  which  can  only  be  satisfactorily  accounted  for  by 
assuming: 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PtAYS.  239 

1.  That   Shakespeare    himself    saw   what    he    de- 
scribed, or 

2.  That  he  was  told  of  it  by  others,  who  had  been 
at  Elsinore,  and  seen  the  interior  of  the  castle. 

He  goes  on:  "I  shall  now  proceed  to  show  that  the 
writer  of  Act  III,  scene  4,  of  Hamlet,  had,  it  seems, 
a  local  knowledge  of  a  room  in  this  famous  castle' ' , 
and  he  goes  on  to  show  the  portraits  of  the  kings  upon 
the  tapestry.  .  .  .  "Shakespeare  shows  a  knowl- 
edge of  Danish  customs,  not  generally  possessed  by 
Englishmen  of  his  time.  .  .  .  Shakespeare,  all 
through  Hamlet,  again  and  again  recurs  to  the  Danish 
custom  of  drinking  'cannon  healths'  '  —peculiarly  a 
Danish  custom.  Every  time  the  king  drinks,  guns  are 
fired.  The  story  of  Hamlet  was  first  told  by  Saxo 
Grammaticus,  in  his  history  of  Denmark,  written  A. 
D.  1180—1200.  The  story  was  translated  into  French 
and  reprinted  in  Paris,  1514,  in  Belleforest's  'Histories 
Tragiques',  1570.  We  know  of  no  other  source  from 
which  Shakespeare  could  have  borrowed  the  story.  .  . 
Shakespeare  changes  the  name  in  Belleforest's  Ham- 
let, to  make  them  Danish,  introduces  new  Danish 
names.  .  .  .  He  introduces  the  names  of  two 
courtiers,  Rosencrantz  and  Guilderstern,  neither  of 
which  is  found  in  Belleforest" , — names  which  belong 
to  the  most  powerful  and  respected  families  of  the 
Danish  nobility.  ...  At  the  beginning  of  Act 
II,  scene  i,  Polonius  asks  Regnaldo:  "Inquire  me  first 
what  Danskers  are  in  Paris".  Dansker  is  a  Danish 
word  and  means  a  Dane.  The  word  occurs  nowhere 
else  in  the  whole  range  of  English  literature,  but  in 
this  passage.  (  Teste,  the  New  English  Dictionary,  D, 


240  SHAKSPER   NOT 

Oxford,  1894.)  But  Dansk,  and  Danske,  (Dan- 
ish) are  wrongly  and  indiscriminately  used  by  all 
other  writers  for  the  people  or  the  country,  or 
as  adjectives,  as  far  back  as  1578.  It  is  cer- 
tainly striking  that  Shakespeare  should  use  a  Dan- 
ish word,  not  used  by  any  one  else,  correctly, 
both  as  regards  meaning  and  grammar,  while  all  his 
contemporaries,  in  both  respects,  are  floundering 
hopelessly  about  the  same  word  in  its  adjectival  form. 
.  .  .  Whence  did  Shakespeare  derive  his  knowl- 
edge of  a  room  in  Kronberg  Castle,  of  Danish  names 
and  customs,  and  other  matters,  a  knowledge  so  accu- 
rate that  he  uses  correctly  Danish  names,  which 
everyone  else  in  Bngland  used  in  a  wrong  form,  and 
meaning?  .  .  .  It  is  a  sheer  impossibility  that 
Shakespeare  could  have  got  knowledge  of  the  kind 
described  from  any  books,  at  that  time  in  England, 
which  have  come  down  to  us.  The  question  at  issue 
wrould  then  seem  to  be  narrowed  down  to  this — did 
he  or  did  he  not,  go  with  his  fellow  actors  to  Elsi- 
nore?" 

In  1585,  some  English  actors  appear  to  have  been  in 
Denmark,  and  they  went  from  Denmark  to  Germany, 
1586,  and  left  Dresden,  1587.  "In  a  passport  issued 
in  lyondon,  1591,  only  four  members  of  Sackville's 
company  are  mentioned  as  going  to  Germany,  though 
we  find  later  there  eighteen.  ...  By  the  pass- 
port we  see  that  English  actors  went  abroad  to  'per- 
form music,  feats  of  agility,  and  the  games  of  comedies, 
tragedies,  histories'.  Every  actor  consequently  was 
more  or  less  of  a  jesting  player,  and  we  see  from  Stowe 
that  Leicester  had  pantomimes,  dancing,  and  vaulting, 


THK   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PI.AYS.  24! 

at  Utrecht,  to  the  great  delight  of  the  Dutch.  We 
may  take  it  then  that  the  English  actors  in  Denmark, 
in  1586,  were  some  of  Leicester's  players  bent  on  seek- 
ing their  fortunes  abroad. ' ' 

Mr.  Stefansson,  finding  that  three  or  four  players, 
who  were  afterwards  connected  with  the  Globe  the- 
ater, (Kempe,  etc.)  were  with  Leicester  in  Holland, 
("we  know  that  these  men  had  been  in  Leicester's 
service  and  gone  to  Denmark  in  1586")  goes  on  to  say 
"// 25  a  legitimate  inference  that  Shakespeare  probably 
joined  them  under  Leicester.  In  fact  J.  P.  Collier  proved 
it  by  a  document  which  he  forged."  I  have  elsewhere 
had  occasion  to  remark  on  the  forgeries  which  spring 
up  in  all  directons,  in  order  to  bolster  up  the  claims  of 
the  strolling  player  Shaksper,  and  to  the  strange  fact 
that  half  the  Shakespeare  commentators  charge  the 
other  half  with  frauds  of  every  description.  But  why 
Stefansson  should  lug  in  Collier's  forged  document 
here,  I  fail  to  see.  He  closes  thus:  "Bearing 'in 
mind  the  striking  knowledge  of  matters  Danish  shown 
in  Hamlet,  and  viewing  it  in  the  light  of  the  fact 
given  above  as  to  Shakespeare  and  his  earliest  fellow 
actors  and  friends,  in  whose  company  he  seems  to  have 
entered  upon  his  theatrical  course",  (all  guesswork 
and  assumption);  "his  visit  with  them  to  Elsinore 
may  be  safely  located  in  the  region  that  lies  between 
probability  and  certainty.  How  near  to  either  these 
must  be  individual  opinion,  but  part  of  the  Danish 
knowledge  in  Hamlet  can,  it  seems,  only  thus  be  ex- 
plained." 

Halliwell-Phillipps  brings  William  Shaksper  to  Lon- 
don, either  in  1585,  or  1586,  (Fleay  holds  that  it  was 


242  SHAKSPER    NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

in  1 58  7),  and  he  tells  us  that  his  first  employment  was 
very  mean,  and  that  after  awhile  he  got  to  be  a  serv- 
itour  in  the  theater.  Also  he  tells  us  that  the  youth, 
at  that  time,  must  have  been  all  but  destitute  of 
polished  accomplishments.  R.  G.  White  says  that 
we  may  be  sure  that  up  to  his  flight,  he  had 
never  seen  half  a  dozen  books  other  than  his  horn 
book,  his  L,atin  Accidence  (a  primary  reader),  and  a 
Bible.  Mr.  Phillipps  further  tells  us,  that  nothing  had 
been  discovered  respecting  the  history  of  Shaksper's 
theatrical  life,  and  that  it  is  all  but  impossible  that  he 
should  not  by  1587  have  already  commenced  his  provin- 
cial tours;  and  that,  for  the  next  five  years,  1587-1592, 
there  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence  respecting  his  ca- 
reer— not  one  word  said  about  him,  in  fact,  which  has 
come  down  to  us.  If  therefore,  William  Shaksper  got 
to  Elsinore  in  1586,  it  was  just  after  he  reached  I/m- 
don,  according  to  Halliwell-Phillipps,  or  while  he  was 
purveying  as  a  butcher  at  Stratford,  according  to 
Fleay — and  anyway  while  he  was  an  illiterate  clown. 
The  Elsinore  theory  may  then  be  dismissed.  That  the 
writer  of  Hamlet  was  at  Elsinore,  however,  is  not  so 
improbable,  but  if  so,  as  an  ambassador,  or  in  political 
employment.  He  showed  the  same  knowledge  of  lan- 
guage, customs,  manners,  and  places  of  Italy,  France, 
Scotland,  as  of  Denmark,  and  was  not  merely  a  trav- 
eller, but  a  man  of  education,  capable  of  appreciating 
and  making  use  of  what  he  learned  in  his  travels.  He 
certainly  was  not  an'  apprentice,  fresh  from  the  coun- 
try, among  a  rabble  of  buffoons,  fiddlers,  tumblers 
and  players.  To  hold  that  any  man,  unlearned,  or 
learned,  'can  have  a  correct  knowledge  of  foreign  Ian- 


THE  TESTIMONY  OP  THE  PI.AYS.  243 

guages,  manners,  customs  and  places  by  intuition,  is 
nonsense.  To  suppose  that  such  a  man  could  sit  down 
and  write  Hamlet  by  inspiration  and  not  by  design — 
or  by  design  either — is  also  nonsense.  And  yet,  if 
Shaksper  did  write  Hamlet,  that  was  the  only  way  he 
could  have  written  it.  I  myself  prefer  to  look  for  a 
cause  adequate  to  the  effect,  and  will  not  stand  gap- 
ing in  wonder  at  a  phenomenon  for  which  there  was 
never  a  cause. 


It  is  manifest  that  the  writer  of  these  plays  was  in- 
timately acquainted  with  the  French,  Italian  and  Span- 
ish languages,  able  to  speak  as  well  as  read  them.  A 
large  part  of  Henry  V  is  in  French — whole  scenes;  and 
the  plots  of  many  of  the  plays  were  borrowed  from 
then  untranslated  Italian  and  Spanish  novels. 

Prof.  Meiklejohn,  372,  says:  "The  modern  English- 
men not  only  speak  Shakespeare,  but  think  Shake- 
speare. His  knowledge  of  human  nature  has  enabled 
him  to  throw  into  English  literature  a  larger  number 
of  genuine  'characters,'  that  will  always  live  in  the 
thoughts  of  men,  than  any  other  author  that  ever 
wrote.  And  he  has  not  drawn  his  characters  from 
England  alone,  and  from  his  own  time — but  from 
Greece  and  Rome,  from  other  countries  too,  and  also 
from  all  ages.  He  has  written  in  a  greater  variety  of 
styles  than  any  other  writer.  'Shakespeare',  says 
Professor  Craik,  'has  invented  twenty  styles'.  The 
knowledge,  too,  that  he  shows  on  every  kind  of  hu- 
man endeavor  is  as  accurate  as  it  is  varied.  Lawyers 
say  that  he  was  a  great  lawyer;  theologians,  that  he 


244  SHAKSPER   NOT 

was  an  able  divine,  and  unequalled  in  his  knowledge 
of  the  Bible;  printers,  that  he  must  have  been  a 
printer;  and  seamen,  that  he  knew  every  branch  of  the 
sailor' s  craft. ' ' 


He  was  familiar  with  courts  and  princes,  as  only  a 
man  could  be  who  had  passed  his  life  in  such  an  at- 
mosphere. Every  one  of  these  branches  of  knowl- 
edge, or  these  experiences,  declares  the  writer  of  the 
plays  to  have  been  an  altogether  different  man  from 
the  player  Shaksper. 

As  will  be  seen  hereafter,  there  is  a  school  of  Shak- 
pereans  who  strive  to  lower  the  poems  and  plays  to 
the  level  of  the  illiterate  player  William  Shaksper,  be- 
ing unable,  professedly,  to  discover  in  these  works 
traces  of  study  or  learning.  The  man  they  say  was 
a  natural  wit,  without  cultivation;  he  sang  as  a  bird 
sings — like  Shelley's  skylark,  "in  profuse  strains  of 
unpremeditated  art".  To  be  sure,  he  had  picked  up  a 
little  knowledge  after  he  reached  London.  He  had  at 
no  time  but  a  smattering,  however,  and  by  consorting 
with  servants  and  retainers  of  great  houses,  he  came 
to  have  that  acquaintance  with  the  manners  of  princes 
and  nobles  of  which  his  works  give  evidence.  That 
sort  of  depreciation  neither  helps  the  player  nor  be- 
clouds the  author.  As  for  the  latter,  Samuel  Taylor 
Coledridge  exclaims:  "Merciful,  wonder-making 
Heaven! — What  a  man  was  this  Shakespeare  !  Myr- 
iad-minded, indeed,  he  was!" 

The  absurdity  and  impertinence  of  the  assumption 
that  the  female  characters  of  these  plays,  Katharine 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PlyAYS.  245 

and  Constance,  Herniione  and  Perdita,  Juliet  and 
Rosalind,  Imogene  and  Beatrice,  Miranda  and  Desde- 
mona,  and  the  hundred  others,  could  have  sprung 
from  the  consciousness  of  a  Warwickshire  clown,  is 
inconceivable. 

L,ook  at  one  of  these  characters,  Miranda,  in  the 
Tempest,  "so  perfect,  so  peerless;  unsullied  purity  of 
mind  and  tenderest  compassion  form  this  exquisite 
creation.  Her  every  thought  is  innocent  and  pure, 
unmixed  with  baser  matter.  There  is  no  stain  of 
earth  upon  her.  She  is  the  rare  consummate  flower 
of  the  highest  culture,  impossible  to  be  found,  no 
doubt,  on  this  earth,  but  blooming  in  matchless  beauty 
in  the  ideal  world  of  Shakspeare."  Ruggles,  674. 

'  'The  exquisite  Miranda  belongs  to  the  highest  ideal 
from  her  position  and  education,  but  her  very  noblest 
attributes  are  those  of  womanhood."  Charles  Knight. 

Will  any  man  venture  to  say  that  this  wonderful 
creation  sprung  from  the  brain  of  a  rollicking,  disso- 
lute strolling  player,  a  man  who  knew  not  what  com- 
passion was,  as  the  records  of  the  courts  show,  who 
could  not  have  had  the  faintest  conception  of  purity 
of  mind,  any  more  than  culture.  A  female  character 
from  the  hand  of  player  Shaksper  wrould  have  had  a 
great  deal  of  the  "stain  of  earth  upon  her".  Doll 
Tear-sheet,  or  Wapping  Sal,  would  have  filled  the  bill 
exactly.  All  experience  teaches  that  water  cannot 
rise  higher  than  its  .source.  The  player's  mother  and 
wife  being  such  persons  as  described  by  Phillipps,  not 
one  whit  higher  than  milk  maids,  how  was  it  possible 
that  he  could  have  known  anything  of  female  delicacy 
and  refinement,  and  of  what  constitutes  a  gentle- 


246  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

woman,  before  he  fled  to  L,ondoii  ?  And  we  may  be 
very  sure  that  the  sort  of  women  he  consorted  with 
after  he  came  to  lyondon  were  neither  princesses  nor 
ladies. 

Players  were  vagabonds,  social  pariahs  (deemed, 
says  Dr.  Ingleby,  sans  aveu,  to  be  rtm-a-ways  and 
vagabonds),  and  the  probability  that  any  man  of 
standing,  gentleman  or  nobleman,  would  invite  one 
of  them  to  dinner,  or  to  introduce  them  to  his  wife 
and  daughters,  is  very  small  indeed.  Hence,  there 
is  not  the  slightest  written  evidence  in  the  letters, 
diaries,  or  gossip  of  that  day,  that  player  or  manager 
Shaksper  was  ever  seen  within  any  gentleman' s  house, 
or  was  anywhere  received  as  an  equal  or  as  a  comrade, 
by  the  better  sort  of  people. 

Yet,  Dr.  Brandes,  in  his  Critical  Studies,  can  talk 
of  William  Shaksper,  of  Stratford,  in  this  way:  "The 
great  ladies  of  that  day  were  extremely  accomplished. 
They  had  been  educated  as  highly  as  the  men,  spoke 
Italian,  French  and  Spanish  fluently,  and  were  not  un- 
frequently  acquainted  with  L,atin  and  Greek.  I^ady 
Pembroke,  Sidney's  sister,  the  mother  of  Shakespeare's 
(Shaksper 's)  patron,  was  regarded  as  the  most  intel- 
lectual woman  of  her  time.  ...  So  that  we  can 
easily  understand  how  a  daring,  highbred  woman  of 
intelligence  should  have  been  for  years  the  object 
which  it  most  delighted  Shakespeare  (Shaksper)  to 
portray."  Dr.  Brandes  has  found  enough  in  the 
poems  and. plays  of  "Shakespeare"  to  enable  him  to 
write  600  pages  to  tell  of  it,  and  all  that  he  finds  he 
lays  at  the  feet  of  the  player,  regardless  of  fact  or 
history.  "In  the  two  volumes  not  a  single  new  fact 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PLAYS.  247 

has  been  added  to  the  records  of  Shakespeare's  life; 
the  reader  would  be  disappointed,  but  not  surprised, 
to  discover  that  not  a  single  new  fact  had  been  added 
to  the  records  of  the  poet's  life;  he  would  look  eagerly 
for  any  addition  to  our  knowledge  of  Shakespeare's 
personal  character,  of  his  relation  to  his  contempo- 
raries, of  his  attitude  towards  the  events  of  his  time, 
of  his  studies,  of  the  influence  exercised  on  him  by 
those  studies  and  by  his  surroundings,  and  he  would 
be  indulgent  if  he  found  merely  a  recapitulation  of 
what  has  long  been  before  the  world.  .  .  .  We  laid 
the  book  down  with  more  disappointment  than  we  can 
express."  Literature,  March  12,  1898. 

The  book  is  another  effort,  like  that  of  Dr.  Baynes, 
to  construct  a  living  Shakespeare  from  the  Shake- 
speare poems  and  plays,  and  the  more  excellent  the  con- 
struction the  more  unlike  it  is  to  William  Shaksper, 
of  Stratford,  of  whom  Halliwell-Phillipps  wrote  the 
biography. 

It  follows  that  some  other  head  conceived,  some 
other  hand  delineated  the  female  characters  of  these 
plays.  Whoever  wrote  them  was  a  gentleman  as 
well  as  of  the  highest  culture.  In  Rosetti's  "Famous 
Poets",  41,  we  read:  "Shakespeare,  it  may  be  abun- 
dantly inferred  from  his  writings,  always  accounted 
himself  a  gentleman  by  birth  and  breeding,  and  the 
associates  of  his  choice  were  gentlemen."  Thus  it  is: 
every  characteristic  of  the  author  of  these  plays,  dis- 
covered in  the  plays,  pushes  the  Stratford  man  farther 
down  the  horizon. 

I  should  not  omit  to  say  here  that  it  is  Dr.  Wallace 
who  accounts  for  the  poet's  intimate  knowledge  of 


248  SHAKSPER     NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

high  life  in  this  way:  "The  lordly  castles  of  War- 
wick and  Kenilworth  were  within  half  a  dozen  miles 
of  Stratford,  and  at  times  of  festivity  such  castles 
were  open  houses,  and  at  all  times  would  be  easily 
accessible  through  the  friendship  of  servants  and  re- 
tainers, and  thus  might  have  been  acquired  some 
portion  of  that  knowledge  of  the  manners  and  speech 
of  nobles  and  kings  which  appear  in  the  historical 
plays." 

Uncaused  phenomena  have  no  play  in  the  scheme  of 
nature;  ' 'nothing  conies  to  pass  without  a  cause,  and 
a  cause  proportionable  and  agreeable  to  the  effect. ' ' 
If  a  man  at  twenty-five  puts  forth  poems  or  plays 
steeped  in  classical  learning;  if  the  L,atin  language  is 
amalgamated  and  consubstantiated  with  his  native 
thought;  if  his  acquaintance  with  the  English  lan- 
guage, and  the  skill  with  which  he  uses  that  language, 
is  phenomenal;  the  effect  must  have  had  a  cause  pro- 
portionable, and  that  cause  was  early  instruction  by 
competent  masters,  and  labor  and  incessant  study  for 
years.  If  the  works  display  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  the  usages  of  polite  society,  the  effect  could  have 
but  one  cause — the  author  must  have  had  good  breed- 
ing in  his  youth.  If  the  works  display  a  minute 
knowledge  of  the  manners  and  customs  of  a  foreign 
country,  with  mention  of  persons  and  places,  at  a  time 
when  there  were  no  itineraries  or  guide-books,  such 
knowledge  could  have  been  gained  only  by  residence 
or  travel  in  said  country.  If  the  works  discover  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  science  of  law,  and  a  fa- 
miliarity with  the  rules  of  pleading,  the  cause  of  this 
effect  was  study  and  practice  in  law,  and  for  a  long 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PLAYS.  249 

period.  If  the  works  evince  a  profound  acquaintance 
with  philosophy,  ancient  and  modern,  the  cause  of 
this  effect  was  not  intuition  or  inspiration,  but  study 
and  meditation  in  seclusion.  Where  in  the  life  of 
William  Shaksper  is  to  be  found  a  cause  proportion- 
able to  any  one  of  these  effects,  much  more  causes 
proportionable  to  them  all  combined  ? 

It  makes  no  difference  who  did  write  the  plays,  in 
the  present  argument;  the  point  is,  that  William  Shak- 
sper, the  Stratford  butcher,  later  player,  did  not. 
When  so  improbable  a  statement  is  made,  as  that  he, 
whose  antecedents  we  have  given,  wrote  these  poems 
and  plays,  in  the  words  of  Prof.  Huxley  on  statements 
no  more  improbable,  "We  not  only  have  a  right  to  de- 
mand, but  we  are  morally  bound  to  require,  strong 
evidence  in  its  favor  before  we  even  take  it  into  con- 
sideration." 

What  is  the  evidence  ?  Simply  that  during  a  period 
of  nine  or  ten  years,  certain  plays — a  long  series  of 
them— and  successive  editions  of  them — were  pub- 
lished anonymously,  and  no  one  gave  sign  that  he 
knew  the  authors;  that  ten  years  after  one  of  them 
(L,.  L.  L.)  had  first  been  performed,  a  new  edition  of 
it  appeared  bearing  the  name  of  "William  Shakespere" 
as  the  reviser  and  augmenter;  that  new  editions  of 
some  other  plays  subsequently  appeared  under  the 
name  of  William  Shake-speare,  or  Shakespeare;  that 
at  the  same  time  new  plays  apparently  by  the  same 
authors,  and  editions  of  the  old  ones,  continued  to 
issue  anonymously;  that  thirty-five  years  after  the 
first  play  of  the  series  had  been  put  on  the  stage,  and 
twenty-five  years  after  the  name  Shakespeare  first  ap- 


250  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

peared  on  a  printed  play,  what  is  called  the  First  Folio, 
comprising  the  "collected  plays  of  William  Shake- 
speare" was  published  by  a  syndicate  of  printers,  not 
improbably  with  the  cooperation  of  one  or  more  of 
the  authors,  at  the  time  living,  because  information 
seems  to  have  been  furnished  the  printers  which  only 
an  author  can  be  supposed  to  have  given,  as  to  which 
among  the  many  plays,  genuine  and  spurious,  were 
really  those  of  "Shakespeare";  also  and  more  par- 
ticularly because  revised  and  enlarged  copies  of  the 
old  plays  were  then  contributed  toward  making  the 
collection  a  complete  one;  that  a  persistent  effort  was 
made  by  the  printers,  who  had  sole  control  of  the 
volume,  and  the  right  as  well  as  the  power  to  do  what 
they  pleased  respecting  it,  even  to  attributing  it  to 
whom  they  pleased,  to  impress  upon  the  public  that 
the  unknown  "Shakespeare"  was  but  another  name 
for  one  Shaksper,  or  Shahkspair,  as  Furnivall  says 
the  man's  name  was  pronounced,  recently  a  proprietor 
of  one  of  the  I^ondon  theaters,  who  had  retired  from 
business  a  very  rich  man;  that  the  publication  excited 
little  interest  at  the  time,  or  for  three-score  years  after- 
wards, during  which  period  the  last  surviving  author 
of  these  plays  had  passed  away,  and  made  no  sign, 
as  also  had  the  printers  and  everybody  who  had  any 
knowledge  of  the  subject-matter;  that  no  one  in  the 
literary  world  knew  or  had  known  this  Shaksper, 
where  he  came  from,  what  were  his  antecedents,  or 
what  his  life  in  I^ondon  had  been,  except  that  he  was 
said  to  have  been  a  player  and  part  owner  of  one  of 
the  public  theaters;  that  whether  he  was  the  author  of 
the  Shakespeare  plays  was  nobodys  care  and  nobody s 


TESTIMONY  OF  THE;  PI^AYS.  251 

business,  for  no  one  thought  the  plays  worth  talking 
about,  or  better  than  the  work  of  other  play-wrights. 
This  is  so,  for  Dr.  Ingleby  assures  us  that  for  a  full 
hundred  years  after  the  first  of  these  plays  appeared, 
no  one  thought  their  author  to  be  sui  generis.  He 
is  also  obliged  to  confess  that  the  suppositions  author 
was  unknown  to  the  men  of  that  age,  because,  after 
the  most  diligent  search  through  all  contemporary 
books,  and  accessible  letters,  diaries,  note-books,  he 
finds  the  man  mentioned  but  three  or  four  times,  while 
he  lived,  and  then  as  a  player  merely,  never  as  a 
writer  or  an  author.  This  being  the  state  of  things, 
it  is  not  surprising  that  as  the  years  went  on,  what  was 
at  first  a  lie  came  to  be  accepted  as  the  truth,  until 
finally  what  was  purely  mythical  in  the  beginning 
came  to  be  a  part  of  the  religion  of  the  English  race. 
To  be  sure  the  Doctor  brings  in  all  the  mentions  of  the 
works,  even  the  most  distant  allusions,  and  transfers 
them  in  bulk  to  his  Shaksper.  But  an  examination 
easily  shows  which  are  references  to  the  player  man,  and 
which  to  the  works  he  did  not  write.  Some  years 
after  the  death  of  Shaksper,  two  or  three  persons  who 
had  known  him  left  some  mention  of  him;  and  one  of 
them  is  contained  in  certain  elegiac  verses  prefixed  to 
the  First  Folio,  entitled  "To  my  Beloved,  Mr.  William 
Shakespeare,  and  what  he  hath  left  us,"  written  as 
Shaksper's  modern  admirers  hold,  in  glowing  and  ap- 
preciative eulogy, — but  certainly  in  ridicule  of  the 
player.  All  the  reputation  of  William  Shaksper  as 
the  author  of  the  works  of  William  Shakespeare  rests 
on  a  string  of  verses  that  are  mocking  and  malicious, 
as  I  shall  presently  show.  There  is  not  a  tittle  be- 


252  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

yond  this  in  his  favor.  So  long  as  nothing  was  known 
of  the  Stratford  man,  there  seemed  no  improbability 
in  the  assumption  that  he  was  the  author;  but  at 
length  arose  careful  investigators,  as  Halliwell-Phil- 
lipps  and  Dr.  Ingleby,  and  all  contemporary  literature 
and  records  were  searched  for  items  in  the  history  of 
William  Shaksper,  with  the  unforeseen  result  that  the 
present  generation  knows  the  man  altogether  too  well. 
They  know  the  kind  of  people  he  came  from,  his 
bringing  up,  the  sort  of  schooling  he  had,  if  he  had 
any,  the  sort  of  handwriting  he  acquired,  if  he  ever 
learned  to  write  at  all,  of  his  apprenticeship  to  a 
butcher;  his  habits  and  associates,  his  flight  from 
Stratford,  and  the  occupation  he  followed  in  London, 
varied  with  trading  and  money  getting;  all  and  every 
one  of  these  conditions  and  pursuits  fatal  to  any  lit- 
erary achievement  whatever.  The  man  made  a  heap 
of  money,  and  that  was  the  sole  outcome  of  his  fifty- 
odd  years'  life-work.  While  he  lived,  he  was  known 
to  no  one  as  a  poet  or  playwright;  indeed  his  hand- 
writing, as  well  as  his  illiteracy,  forbade  that,  and 
any  reputation  he  has  now  in  that  direction  is  wholly 
mythical.  The  labors  of  the  two  investigators  named 
have  stripped  off  his  borrowed  plumes,  and  left  him 
an  obscure  and  uninteresting  mortal.  No  one  during 
his  lifetime  testified  in  verse  or  prose,  or  in  any  sort  of 
writing  that  has  come  to  us,  Ingleby  being  witness, 
that  William  Shaksper,  of  Stratford-on-Avon,  wrote 
poems  or  plays.  "Allusions  to  his  works  will  be  found 
collected  in  Dr.  Ingleby 's  Centurie  of  Prayse;  but 
they  consist  almost  entirely  of  slight  references  to  his 
published  works,  and  have  no  bearing  of  importance- 


THE   TESTIMONY   OF   THE   PI,AYS.  253 

on  his  career.  Neither  as  addressed  to  him  by  others, 
nor  by  him  to  others,  do  any  commendatory  verses 
exist  in  connection  with  his  or  other  men's  works  pub- 
lished in  his  lifetime".  Fleay,  73. 

He  is  represented  fifty  times  as  a  man  of  business, 
engaged  in  piling  up  his  ducats  by  a  great  variety  of 
occupations,  and  is  also  known  as  a  player,  manager, 
and  part  proprietor  of  a  public  theater;  but  no  one 
while  he  lived  said  that  he  wrote  plays  for  that  thea- 
ter, or  wrote  plays  or  poems  at  all.  No  one  said  he 
had  ever  seen  him  with  a  book  or  pen  in  his  hand,  or 
heard  him  speak  of  writing  plays.  No  one  testified 
that  he  was  engaged,  or  thought  to  be  engaged,  about 
any  literary  matter  whatever.  He  was  running  a 
theater,  and  getting,  as  he  could,  interludes,  or  shows, 
or  spectacles,  wherewith  to  amuse  an  audience  of  illit- 
erate and  ignorant  people.  While  he  was  so  connected 
with  the  theater,  certain  plays  issued  from  the  press 
for  years  anonymously,  but  at  length  some  of  them 
bore  the  name  "William  Shakespeare",  a  name  when 
spoken  having  but  a  distant  resemblance  to  his  own. 
He  called  himself  in  his  youth  Shagsper,  and  his 
father  had  gone  by  forty  variations  of  the  name 
Shaksper — Shaxper,  Shacksper,  Shaxberd,  etc.,  etc. 
Later,  in  London,  he  signed  his  name  (or  it  was 
signed  for  him,  with  his  consent)  to  a  deed  and  mort- 
gage, Shakspar,  and  Shaksper;  and  finally,  at  Strat- 
ford, to  his  last  Will,  three  times,  Shaksper.  The  reg- 
istry of  his  burial  at  Stratford  made  him  Shakspere, 
according  to  Phillipps,  but  instead  of  the  terminal 
letters  re,  it  is  probably  the  German  r,  and  so  Shak- 
sper. 


254  SHAKSPER   NOT    SHAKESPEARE. 

Scenes  from,  or  skeletons  of,  some  of  these  plays 
may  have  been  given  at  this  man's  theater,  and  it  is 
not  improbable  that  some  outsiders,  knowing  nothing 
of  player  Shaksper  personally  or  historically — for  as 
Ingleby  tells  us  "he  was  unknown  to  the  men  of  that 
age" — and  knowing  nothing  of  William  Shakespeare, 
the  author  of  the  plays,  may  have  supposed  player  and 
author  the  same  individual.  But  no  one  said  so.  It 
is  a  surmise  at  best.  John  Manningham,  who  told  a 
story  about  player  Shaksper,  calls  him  Shakespeare 
(Ingleby,  45),  and  John  Davies  (86)  speaks  of  him  as 
a  player  ("Hadst  thou  not  played  some  kingly  parts," 
etc.)  under  the  name  of  Shakespeare.  If  either  of 
these  men  thought  he  was  the  William  Shakespeare 
who  was  writing  the  plays,  he  did  not  say  so.  Both 
Manningham  and  Davies  spoke  of  him  as  a  player. 
There  is  nothing,  up  to  the  player's  death,  that  im- 
plies that  anyone  thought  player  and  author  the  same 
individual.  After  his  death,  two  or  three  men  who 
had  known  him  assured  the  world  that  this  man  was 
the  real  author,  but  they  gave  their  testimony  under 
very  suspicious  circumstances. 

It  would  appear  that  the  player  applied  for  a  grant 
of  coat-armour  for  his  father  under  the  name  of 
"Shakspere",  (his  profession  making  it  impossible 
that  such  right  should  be  granted  to  himself) ,  insinu- 
ating that  his  ancestors  had  been  fierce  in  battle,  and 
had  shaken  spears  as  well  as  other  folk — and  Shaksper 
or  Shahkspair  (John  Peter)  was  a  name  to  slough  off 
if  coat-armour  was  in  question,  and  William  was  to 
be  metamorphosed  into  a  gentleman. 

When  John  Shaksper  came  to  be  buried,  his  name 


THE    TESTIMONY    OF    THE    PLAYS.  255 

was  written  iu  the  Stratford  Church  Register  (where 
it  can  be  seen  to-day)  Shakspeare;  and  later,  his  wife, 
as  Mrs.  Shakspeare,  (not  Shakespeare — they  all  stick 
to  the  Shak).  William  Shaksper  was  entered  in  the 
same  book.  It  is  conceivable  that  the  name  Shake- 
speare, in  the  last  years  of  his  player  or  manager  life 
came  to  attach  to  him,  first  as  a  joke  and  then  as  a 
custom,  and  that  he  was  known  to  his  fellows  in  Lon- 
don as  Shakespeare,  as  often  as  Shaksper.  The  player 
may  have  come  to  pose  as  the  true  and  only  Shake- 
speare. This,  however,  is  all  guess-work,  for  there  is 
no  evidence  one  way  or  other. 


PART  II. 


REFERENCES   TO   SHAKESPEARE.  259 


CHAPTER  X. 

REFERENCES  TO  SHAKESPEARE,  AUTHOR  OR 
WORKS,  OR  TO  THE  MAN  FROM  STRATFORD-ON- 
AVON,  THE  PLAYER  SHAKSPER  OR  SHAKSPERE. 

The  references  or  allusions  to,  and  mentions  of, 
Shakespeare,  author  or  works,  or  player  Shaksper,  di- 
rect or  indirect,  between  1592  and  1616,  the  date  of 
the  player's  death,  and  between  1616  and  1692,  in 
contemporary  literature,  were  carefully  collected  by 
Dr.  Ingleby,  and  published  in  the  "Centurie  of 
Prayse",  1874.  This  contained  228  references.  In 
1879,  Miss  L,ucy  Toulmin  Smith,  by  request,  and  with 
the  approval,  of  Dr.  Ingleby,  edited  the  second  edition, 
in  which  the  references  were  brought  up  to  356  for  the 
one  hundred  years.  Miss  Smith,  in  the  preface  says, 
however,  that  a  re-examination  renders  25  of  Dr. 
Ingleby 's  228  references  doubtful,  and  to  each  of 
these  she  has  affixed  an  asterisk  of  warning  for  the 
reader's  benefit.  Rejecting  the  25  spoken  of — because 
if  they  are  doubtful,  they  are  valueless  in  this  case — 
that  makes,  according  to  Ingleby  and  Smith,  about 
three  mentions  per  year  of  Shakespeare,  author  or 
works,  or  references  to  works,  for  the  one  hundred 
years. 

Between  1592  and  1616,  the  number  of  allusions  is 
121.  On  examining  them  carefully,  I  find  the  follow- 
ing state  of  things: — 

i.  There  are  but  three  concerning  the  player,  viz; 


260  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

45)  67>  94> — possibly  two  others,  58  and  89.     None  of 
him  as  an  author. 

2.  To  the  individual  who  wrote  the  plays,  "William 
Shakespeare",  none  that  are  personal. 

3.  To  "Shakespeare",  author  of  poems  or  plays,  or 
both,  nine:  6,  16,  26,  30,  48,  64,  71,  76,  106 — not  one 
of  them  implying  a  personal   acquaintance  with  this 
author. 

4.  "Shakespeare"  enumerated   among  other  poets, 
nine:  20,  21,  56,  59,  63,  91,  100,  108,  in.* 

5.  To  one  or  other  poem  without  mention  of  Shake- 
speare's name,  seven:   13,  14,  17,  32,  33,  57,  75. 

6.  To  one  or  other  play  without  mention  of  name  of 
"Shakespeare",  thirty:  25,  27,  29,  31,  38,  40,  41,  47, 
50,  52,  60,  62,  66,  72,  73,  74,  77,  79,  85,  90,  95,  97, 
101,  102,  103,  105,  114,  115,  117,  118. 

7.  I  reject  some  of  the  so-called  allusions  because 
there  is  no  evidence  that  they  refer  either  to  Shake- 
speare or  the  Shakespeare  poems:   i,   7,  44,   53,   55, 
86,  98. 

8.  I  also  reject  sixteen  because  it  is  not  certain  that 
a  Shakespeare  play  is  referred  to  at  all:  5,  12,  19,  35, 
36,  42,  57,  60,  69,  78,  82,  93,  107,  109,  112,  113. 

One  of  the  allusions  to  Shakespeare  which  I  have 
credited  to  him  as  author  of  the  poems,  viz:  30,  speaks 
of  the  Venus  and  Adonis  and  also  of  Hamlet:  G. 
Harvey,  "1598,  or  after  1600".  This  was  from  "a 
manuscript  note  in  Speght's  Chaucer,  now  lost;  first 
printed  in  Johnson  and  Steevens'  Shakespeare,  1773". 

*  Bvery  mention  of  "Shakespeare"  is  included  within  the  18 
references  here  specified  in  paragraphs  3  and  4. 


REFERENCES  TO   SHAKESPEARE.  26 1 

"The  younger  sort  take  much  delight  in  Shakespeare's 
Venus  and  Adonis;  but  his  Lucrece,  and  his  tragedy 
of  Hamlet,  Prince  of  Denmark,  have  it  in  them  to 
please  the  wiser  sort,  1598."  Malone,  who  saw  the 
volume,  doubted  whether  the  note  was  written  by 
Harvey  before  1600,  and  consequently  Ingleby  has 
added  the  date  1600  with  a  query.  Now  the  first 
Quarto  of  Hamlet  was  printed  in  1603;  was  entered 
in  the  Stationer's  Register,  26  July,  1602,  and  Fleay 
thinks  it  was  first  played  in  1601.  He  says  of  this 
first  Quarto:  "This  form  of  Hamlet  seems  to  have 
been  an  unfinished  refashioning  of  the  old  play  of 
Kyd  that  had  so  long  been  performed  by  the  Cham- 
berlain's men",  p.  229.  At  best  then,  Harvey's  refer- 
ence to  Hamlet  is  based  on  the  supposition  that  the 
author  of  Lucrece,  whoever  he  might  be,  had  edited 
the  new  edition  of  Kyd's  Hamlet. 

There  is  but  one  reference  to  any  author  during  the 
twenty-four  years  which  shows  that  the  writer  thought 
that  the  author  of  the  poems,  to- wit,  William  Shake- 
speare, had  also  written  plays.  Francis  Meres,  1598, 
the  same  year  in  which  an  edition  of  Love's  Labour 's 
Lost  first  exhibited  the  name  of  William  Shakespeare 
on  the  title  page  of  a  play,  was  apparently  led  to  con- 
jecture that  several  plays,  which  for  the  last  years 
had  been  performed  or  published  anonymously  were 
by  the  same  author.  He  was  partly  right,  but  in  the 
greater  part  wrong. 

Dr.  Frederick  J.  Furnivall,  in  1886,  published  what 
was  announced  to  be  a  work  supplementary  to  Ingle- 
by's,  entitled  "Some  300  Fresh  Allusions  to  Shakspere 
from  1594  to  1694."  From  1594  to  1616,  there  are 


262  SHAKSP4R   NOT   SHAKKSPKAR3. 

53  so-called  allusions  to  Shakespeare,  author  or 
works — none  to  the  player  (Shaksper) — none  of  them 
expressing  or  implying  an  acquaintance  with  the  au- 
thor— many  of  them  doubtful,  many  indefinite;  the 
larger  part  introduced  as  ' 'echoes  of",  "resemblances 
to",  "recollections  of",  "seems  to  be  taken  from", 
seem  to  be  copying  Shakspere",  "may  have  had  in 
mind",  " con jecturally  an  allusion  to",  "in  all  proba- 
bility borrowed  from",  "quoted  rather  as  illustrations 
than  recollections  of",  sounds  like",  "an  expansion  of 
a  line  in",  "had  an  eye  on  the  well-known  passage", 
"a  suggestion  of  the  words  of",  "perhaps  found  on". 
Some  mention  or  allude  to  Venus  and  Adonis,  some 
allude — usually  remotely — to  one  play  or  other;  none 
have  anything  to  say  of  Shakespeare,  author,  except 
that  the  writer  of  the  Returne  from  Parnassus,  1600, 
whom  Ingleby  had  already  quoted,  p.  12,  made  one  of 
the  interlocutors  exclaim,  '  'Sweete  Mr.  Shakspeare' ' , 
and  again,  "O,  sweete  Mr.  Shakspere,  I'll  have  his 
picture  at  my  study  at  the  courte. ' ' 

GAU,  (10) — "Let  me  heare  Mr.  Shakspear's  veyne." 
INGEN  (TOSO)  "Faire  Venus,  queene  of  beaut-ie  and  of  love, 

Thy  red  doth  stayne  the  blushings  of  the  morn, 

Thy  snowy  neck,"  etc.,  etc. 
GAI,!,. — '%et    this    duncified  world    esteem    of    Spenser    and 

Chaucer,  I'll  worship  sweete  Mr.   Shakespeare,  and  to 

honor  him  will  lay  his  Venus  and  Adonis   under  my 

pillow,'  etc. 

In  but  one  other  of  these  allusions,  John  Bodenham, 
1600,  p.  13,  is  the  name  of  Shakespeare  mentioned, 
and  then  merely  as  one  of  the  flowers  of  the  Muses' 


REFERENCES  TO   SHAKESPEARE.  263 

Garden:  '  'Edmund  Spenser,  Henry  Constable,  John 
Marston,  Christopher  Marlowe,  Benjamin  Johnson, 
William  Shakespeare." 

In  the  two  volumes  of  Ingelby  and  Furuivall, 
"Shakespeare,"  author  (or  works)  is  mentioned  by 
name,  between  1591  and  1616,  or  during  25  years, 
just  twenty  times;— less  than  once  a  year;  between 
1616  and  1623,  the  date  of  the  issue  of  the  First  Folio, 
three  times,  or  once  in  2  years;  between  1623  and  1632, 
when  the  2nd  Folio  issued,  35  times,  or  nearly  four 
times  per  year;  between  1632  and  1660,  46  times,  or 
about  one  and  one-half  times  a  year;  between  1660 
and  1693,  I01  times,  or  about  three  times  a  year. 
The  total  number  of  mentions  in  the  one  hundred 
years  contained  in  these  authors  is  206,  or  a  trifle 
over  two  per  year.  In  1659,  the  name  Shakespeare 
was  not  mentioned  at  all.  Think  of  it!* 

Wm.  Shaksper,  (assumed  by  Ingleby  and  Furni- 
vall  to  have  been  William  Shakespeare),  died  in  1616. 
In  Ingleby 's  book  there  is  no  mention  of  Shakspere  or 
Shakespeare  in  that  year,  except  that  the  inscription 
over  his  grave,  "Good  friend  for  Jesus  sake  forbear," 
etc.,  is  given.  In  Furnivall  there  is  not  a  line  respect- 
ing either  of  the  two  men  between  1610  and  1620,  and 
indeed  for  a  much  longer  period. 

Consider  what  these  compilations  mean: — During 
nearly  the  whole  of  the  i9th  century  numerous  per- 
sons have  been  searching  all  English  literature  con- 

*Furnivall's  allusions  are  largely  gathered  by  running 
through  the  plays  of  a  voluminous  author,  as  Ford,  Massinger, 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  spotting  everything  that  seemed 
"an  echo  of",  etc.,  etc. 


264  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKKSPKAR^. 

temporary  with  the  life  of  William  Shaksper  of  Strat- 
ford-on-Avon,  or  of  William  Shakespeare,  author,  and 
his  works,  during  the  same  period,  the  two  names  be- 
ing generally  supposed  to  belong  to  the  same  individ- 
ual. The  compilers  of  the  modern  English  dictionaries 
solicit  the  aid  of  cultivated  men  and  women,  wherever 
the  English  language  is  spoken,  in  search  of  words  in 
all  books,  and  they  find  thousands  of  helpers.  In  this 
way,  in  search  of  Shaksper,  player,  or  Shakespeare, 
author,  or  works,  thousands  of  volunteer  readers  have 
gone  through  every  book  published  between  the  years 
I  have  mentioned.  Not  only  all  books,  but  all  ac- 
cessible correspondence  contemporary  with  the  London 
life  of  player  Shaksper,  and  there  remains  to-day  a 
vast  accumulation  of  it ;  all  diaries — and  it  was  an  age 
of  diaries  and  note-books — these  and  correspondence 
filling  the  place  which  newspapers  came  to  occupy  in 
the  later  centuries.  And  what  is  the  outcome  of  all 
this  search?  Between  1587,  when  he  went  to  London, 
and  1616,  the  year  of  his  death,  there  are  but  three 
mentions  and  two  possible  allusions  in  books,  letters, 
note-books,  or  diaries,  of  or  to  the  player.  That  is, 
as  a  man  connected  in  any  way  with  a  theater.  There 
is  not  one  of  him  as  an  author. 

What  Dr.  Ingleby's  reasons  for  making  his  com- 
pilation were  is  not  apparent,  but  if  he  thought  it  to 
the  honor  of  William  Shaksper,  of  Stratford,  he  was 
a  good  deal  astray.  Charles  Dickens  wrote:  "The  life 
of  Shakspere  is  a  fine  mystery,  and  I  tremble  every 
day  lest  something  should  turn  up. ' '  Bishop  Words- 
worth thoughtfully  remarks  on  this,  396:  "It  has  been 
a  frequent  subject  of  complaint  that  so  little  has  come 


REFERENCES  TO  SHAKESPEARE.  265 

down  to  us  respecting  our  poet's  life.  For  my  part,  I 
am  inclined  to  doubt  whether  it  would  be  desirable  for 
us  to  be  more  fully  informed  concerning  it  than  we 
actually  are;"  and  in  a  note,  the  good  Bishop  of  St. 
Andrews  adds,  that  Charles  Dickens  in  his  letters, 
then  just  published  (1879)  "expresses  very  strongly 
the  same  sentiment. ' ' 

Well,  something  has  turned  up,  and  in  an  unex- 
pected quarter;  something  in  the  shape  of  Phillipps' 
"Life",  Ingleby's  "Centurie",  and  Furnivall's  "Fresh 
Allusions' ' .  These  three  books  have  done  the  business 
for  the  claimant;  these  three  authors  have  cooked 
Shaksper's  goose,  and  there  is  no  gainsaying  their 
testimony.  Ignorance  is  the  mother  of  devotion; 
why  could  not  these  busy-bodies  have  let  sleeping 
dogs  lie,  and  suffered  us  to  worship  our  numbo- jumbo 
in  peace! 

A  few  mentions  of  the  man  Shaksper  could  have 
been  collected  outside  his  theatrical  life — in  the  rec- 
ords of  the  Court  of  Stratford,  or  of  the  town  itself; 
in  deeds  or  conveyances  of  one  sort  or  other.  Two 
letters  of  Abraham  Sturley  to  Richard  Quiney  speak 
of  Mr.  Shaksper,  and  "Mr.  Win.  Shak",  respectively; 
one  referring  to  Shaksper's  contemplated  purchase  of 
land  at  Shottery  (H.-P.,  II,  57);  the  other  saying 
that  the  writer  had  received  Quiney 's  letter  assuring 
him  "that  our  countriman  would  procure  us  monie", 
and  nothing  further.  (H.-P.,  II,  59.)  There  is  also 
extant  a  letter  from  said  Quiney  to  Wm.  Shaksper 
direct,  asking  for  a  loan  of  money.  But  these  men- 
tions did  not  fall  within  the  plan  of  Ingleby's  book, 
and  are  therefore  not  given  in  it. 


266  SHAKSP^R  NOT  SHAKKSPEARK. 

The  total  "number  of  mentions  given  in  Ingleby  in 
the  same  years  (1591  to  1616)  of  Shakespere  or  Shake- 
speare, referring  solely  to  certain  poems  and  plays,  are 
sixty-five,  but  I  reject,  as  I  have  said,  twenty-two  of 
them  for  uncertainty.  Many  of  them  are  so  obscure 
that  they  should  not  have  been  included  in  the  Cen- 
turie  of  Prayse.  I  will  speak  of  the  three  references 
to  the  player.  [Edmund  Spenser  should  not  have 
been  in  this  book,  and  bears  the  asterisk  of  warning. 
A  verse  is  quoted  from  Colin  Clout,  which  alludes  to 
some  one  under  the  name  of  Action: 

"And  there,  though  last,  not  least  is  Action, 

A  gentler  shepheard  may  nowhere  be  found; 
Whose  Muse,  full  of  high  thought's  invention, 
Doth  like  himself  Heroically  sound." 

In  his  ist  Ed.,  Dr.  Ingleby  says  that  this  verse  must 
have  been  meant  for  Shakespeare,  because  no  other 
poet  has  a  surname  of  heroic  sound' ' ;  but  he  adds  that 
Halliwell-Phillipps  remarks  that  the  lines  seem  to 
apply  with  equal  propriety  to  Warner.*  The  26.  Ed. 
gives  the  verse,  but  the  editor  has  affixed  to  it  an 
asterisk  of  warning;  that  is,  it  is  regarded  as  pre- 
sumably a  reference  to  some  one  else  other  than  Shake- 
speare. Nobody  now  can  tell  whom  it  was  meant 
for]. 

On  p.  45,  John  Manningham,  i3th  March,  1601, 
makes  the  player  party  to  an  amour,  as  follows:—- 

*  Warner,  author  of  Albion's  England,  a  now  forgotten  poem. 
But  '  'Warner,  according  to  Anthony  Wood,  was  ranked  by  his 
contemporaries  on  a  level  with  Spenser,  and  they  were  called 
the  Homer  and  Virgil  of  their  age."  Craik. 


REFERENCES   TO   SHAKESPEARE.  267 

"Upon  a  tyme  Burbridge  played  Rich.  3,  there  was  a 
citizen  gaen  so  farr  in  liking  with  him,  that  before  shee 
went  from  the  play  shee  appointed  him  to  come  that 
night  unto  her  by  the  name  of  Rich,  the  3.  Shake- 
speare overhearing  their  conclusion,  went  before,  was 
entertained  and  at  his  game  ere  Burbridge  came. 
Then  Message  being  brought  that  Rich,  the  3  was  at 
dore,  Shakspere  caused  return  to  be  made  that  William 
the  Conquerour  was  before  Rich,  the  3.  Shakespere's 
name  William".  No  light  here  on  the  authorship  of 
the  Shakespeare  plays;  or  that  William  Shaksper  was 
known  to  the  writer  of  this  note  otherwise  than  as  a 
player.  Indeed  it  is  fair  to  assume  that  Manning- 
ham,  who  was  of  the  Middle  Temple,  and  a  barrister- 
at-law,  an  educated  and  reading  man,  as  the  Twelfth 
Night  entry  in  his  diary  shows,  did  not  recognize  this 
man  of  the  amour  as  the  author  of  plays  now  pub- 
lished for  some  years  under  the  name  of  William 
Shakespeare.  He  had  made  an  entry  in  his  diary, 
2  Feb.,  of  the  same  year,  1601:  "At  our  feast  we  had 
a  play  called  Twelve  Night,  much  like  the  Menechmi 
in  Plautus,  but  most  like  and  nearer  to  that  in  Italian 
called  Inganni",  and  so  on,  giving  a  brief  abstract  of 
the  play.  When  he  recorded  the  story,  six  weeks 
later  told  on  player  Shaksper,  or  Shakespere,  as  he 
calls  him,  he  very  naturally  would  have  added  "author 
of  the  Twelfth  Night  play  that  so  amused  me  a  few 
weeks  ago,"  if  he  had  known  or  ever  heard  that  he 
was  the  author.  Nothing  of  the  sort — no  hint  that 
player  and  author  were  one  individual.  The  Shake- 
spere plays  had  been  on  the  stage  since  1589,  or  for 
twelve  years  before  Manningham  made  his  entry, 


268  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

many  of  them  of  the  greatest  of  the  series,  and  ac- 
cording to  Phillipps,  they  were  much  talked  of.  Yet 
this  lawyer  evidently  knew  nothing  of  their  connection 
with  the  player  of  whom  he  tells  the  story. 

67.  Anonymous,  about  1605,  Ratsie's  Ghost.  This 
advises  a  player  to  go  to  London:  "There  thou 
shalt  learn  to  be  frugal,  and  to  feed  upon  all  men,  but 
let  none  feed  upon  thee;  to  make  thy  hand  a  stranger 
to  thy  pocket,  thy  heart  slow  to  perform  thy  tongue's 
promises;  and  when  thou  feelest  thy  purse  well  lined, 
buy  thee  some  place  of  lordship  in  the  country,  . 
for  I  have  heard  indeed  of  some  that  have  gone  to  London 
very  meanly,  and  have  come  in  time  to  be  exceedingly 
wealthy. ' '  All  commentators  agree  that  this  refers  to 
player  and  land-owner  Shaksper.  The  note  by  the 
editor  to  the  second  edition  of  Ingleby,  says  that 
"some  that  have  gone  to  London,  etc.",  unmistakably 
points  to  Shakespeare  (Shaksper). 

94.  John  Davies  of  Hereford,  about  1611,  Ing.,  94: 
"To  our  English  Terence,  Mr.  Will  Shake-speare: 

Some  say  (good  Will). 

Which  I,  in  sport,  do  sing 

Hadst  thou  not  plaid  some  kingly  part,  in  sport, 

Thou  hadst  bin  a  companion  for  a  King ; 

And  beene  a  king  among  the  meaner  sott, 

Thou  hast  no  rayling,  but  a  raigning  Wit." 

The  editor  says  here:  "It  seems  likely  that  these 
lines  refer  to  the  fact  that  Shakspere  was  a  player,  a 
profession  that  was  then  despised  and  accounted 
mean."  If  you  were  not  a  player  you  would  pass  for 
a  good  fellow,  yes,  even  a  king  among  the  meaner 
sort. 


REFERENCES   TO   SHAKESPEARE.  269 

John  Davies  of  Hereford*  (not  to  be  confounded 
with  another  poet,  Sir  John  Davies),  was  an  actor  dur- 
ing the  greater  part  of  his  life.  He  here  speaks  of 
Shakespeare  as  an  actor,  not  as  a  poet  or  as  a  play- 
writer.  It  is  true  that  he  heads  this  line  quoted, 
''To  our  English  Terence,"  but  the  lines  that  follow 
speak  of  the  man  as  a  player  only.  That  cannot  be 
construed  into  a  testimony  that  Davies  regarded  Shak- 
sper  as  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays.  Terence 
wrote  comedies  only,  and  if  Davies  referred  to  comedies 
attributed  to  William  Shaksper,  the  player,  he  may 
have  meant  Fair -Em,  the  Miller's  Daughter,  as  prob- 
ably as  anything  else, — or  interludes  and  jigges. 

There  are  two  possible  allusions  to  player  Shaksper 
by  the  same  John  Davies.  One  of  these  is  found  in 
Ingleby,  58,  1603: 

"Players,  I  love  yee,  and  your  Qualitief, 
As  ye  are  Men,  that  pass  time  not  abus'd: 
And  some  I  love  for  painting,  poesie, 
W.  S.  R.  B.     And  say  fell  Fortune  cannot  be  excus'd, 
That  hath  for  better  uses  you  refus'd: 
Wit,  courage,  good  shape,  good  partes,  and  all  good, 
As  long  as  all  these  goods  are  no  worse  us'd, 
And  though  the  stage  doth  staine  pure  gentle  blood, 
Yet  generous  ye  are  in  minde  and  moode." 

In  the  margin  to  the  left  are  printed  the  capital  let- 


*  "A  contemporary  author  of  a  great  quantity  of  verse.  Gifted 
with  extraordinary  volubility  and  self-confidence,  but  with  no 
delicacy  or  taste,  the  writings  of  this  John  Davies  have  survived 
more  by  reason  of  their  bulk,  and  their  accidental  interest  of  ref- 
erence or  dedication  than  from  any  intrinsic  merit".  Bnc.  Brit. 

f  "  'Quality'  in  Elizabethan  English  was  the  technical  term 
for  the  'actor's  profession.'  "  I*ee,  43. 


270        SHAKSPSR  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

ters,  W.  S.  R.  B.  as  reproduced  here,  supposed  by  In- 
gleby  to  mean  William  Shaksper  and  Richard  Burbage. 
They  may  have  stood  for  either  William  Smith  or 
William  Sly.  William  Shaksper  would  seem  to  have 
been  too  insignificant  as  a  player  to  be  thus  apos- 
trophized. 

Again,  84,  Ing.,  1609,  Davies  speaks  thus: 

"Some  followed  her  by  acting  all  mens  parts, 
These  on  a  stage  she  raised  (in  scorne)  to  fall: 
And  made  them  Mirrors,  by  their  acting  Arts 
Wherein  men  saw  their  faults,  thogh  ne'rso  small: 
W.  S.  R.  B.     Yet  some  she  guerdoned  not,  to  their  desarts; 
But  othersome,  were  but  ill — Action  all: 
Who  while  they  acted  ill,  ill  staid  behind, 
(By  custome  of  their  maners)  in  their  minde." 

Again  the  letters  W.  S.  R.  B.  stand  in  the  margin. 

These  three  mentions  and  the  two  possible  allusions 
of  and  to  player  Shaksper  are  all  that  are  to  be  found 
in  Ingleby  and  Furnivall  between  1597  and  1616. 

There  is  a  reference  to  Thos.  Heywood,  p.  99,  1612, 
which  has  been  claimed  as  testimony  to  the  player's 
authorship,  as  follows: 

"Here  likewise,  I  must  necessarily  insert  a  manifest 
injury  done  me  in  that  work"  (the  Passionate  Pilgrim, 
by  W.  Shakespeare,  a  collection  made  by  the  piratical 
publisher,  William  Jaggard,  in  which  two  poems  by 
Heywood  were  printed  as  Shakespeare's),  by  taking 
the  two  epistles  of  Paris  to  Helen,  and  Helen  to  Paris, 
and  printing  them  under  the  name  of  another,  which 
may  put  the  world  in  opinion  I  might  steal  them  from 
him.  ...  So  the  author"  (Ingleby  says  Shake- 
speare, but  Heywood  merely  says  the  author)  I  know 


REFERENCES   TO   SHAKESPEARE.  271 

much  offended  with  Mr.  Jaggard,  that  altogether  un- 
known to  him,  presumed  to  be  so  bold  with  his  name." 
Not  much  light  here.  As  Jaggard' s  book  contains 
some  genuine  Shakespeare  Sonnets,  that  is,  Sonnets 
by  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  poems,  it  is  to  be 
understood  that  Heywood  had  this  author,  whoever 
he  was,  in  mind.  Certainly  there  is  nothing  to  con- 
nect the  authorship  with  player  Shaksper. 

Richard  Barnfeild,  1598,  Ing.  26,  wrote  "A  Remem- 
brance of  some  English  Poets' ' .  After  a  verse  to  Spen- 
ser, and  others  to  Daniel  and  Dray  ton,  he  speaks  thus: 

"And  Shakespeare  thou,  whose  honey-flowing  vaine 
(Pleasing  the  World)  thy  Praises  doth  obtaine. 
Whose  Venus  and  whose  Lucrece  (sweete  and  chaste) 
Thy  name  in  fame's  immortall  Booke  have  plac't. 
Live  ever  you,  at  least  in  Fame  live  ever: 
Well  may  the  Bodye  die,  but  Fame  dies  never." 

There  is  no  intimation  here  that  Barnfeild  had  a 
personal  acquaintance  with  the  author  of  Venus  and 
Adonis,  and  there  is  not  a  word  respecting  plays  writ- 
ten by  that  author,  nor  anything  to  connect  the  verse 
with  player  Shaksper. 

John  Webster,  1612,  Ing.  100,  is  talking  of  sev- 
eral authors,  the  good  opinion  of  whose  labors  he 
"had  ever  truly  cherished": — especially  of  "that  full 
and  heightened  style  of  Master  Chapman,  the  labored 
and  understanding  works  of  Master  Jonson;  the  no 
less  worthy  composures  of  the  both  worthily  excellent 
Master  Beaumont  and  Master  Fletcher;  the  right  happy 
and  copious  industry  of  Mr.  Shake-speare,  Mr.  Decker 
and  Mr.  Heywood,"  etc.  Webster  was  one  of  the 


272  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

great  poets  and  dramatists  of  that  age,  and  he,  in  all 
his  writings,  had  nothing  to  say  of  "Shake-speare" 
other  than  that  he  exhibited  remarkable  industry. 
There  is  nothing  personal  in  this  mention,  nothing 
implying  that  Webster  had  an  acquaintance  with  this 
'  'Shake-speare' ' ;  nothing  to  indicate  that  he  had  ever 
read  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  or  one  of  the  plays;  cer- 
tainly nothing  that  he  had  in  mind  a  player  at  the 
Globe  Theater. 

Shakspereans  cite  these  words  of  John  Webster  as 
if  they  wrere  proof  conclusive  that  the  contemporaries 
of  William  Shaksper  held  him  to  be  the  author  of  the 
Shakespeare  poems  and  plays.  Thus,  the  Spectator 
(L,ondon)  yth  May,  1898,  in  a  paper  on  Dr.  Brandes' 
'  'Shakespeare' ' ,  thinks  that  Brandes  should  have  em- 
phasized the  fact  that  so  great  a  man  as  Webster 
classes  "Shakespeare"  (z.  e.  Shaksper)  "promiscuously 
with  Hey  wood  and  Decker' ' .  Whereas  it  is  plain  that 
Webster  had  no  thought  of  anything  but  of  the  rapid- 
ity of  production;  and  surely  there  is  in  his  mention 
no  thought  of  the  player.  Dr.  Ingleby  is  led  by  these 
and  other  mentions  of  Shakespeare  in  the  same  style 
to  say  that  "It  is  plain  that  the  bard  of  our  admira- 
tion was  unknown  to  the  men  of  that  age."  No  one 
knew  such  a  bard  otherwise  than  by  his  writings. 

There  is  a  reference,  J.  M.,  1600—12,  p.  98,  which  I 
reject  for  uncertainty;  and  to  which  Miss  Smith  has 
affixed  the  asterisk. 

"It  seems  'tis  true  that  W.  S.  said, 
When  once  he  heard  one  courting  of  a  Mayde, — 
Believe  not  thou  Mens  fayned  flatteryes, 
Lovers  will  tell  a  bushell  full  of  lies." 


REFERENCES   TO   SHAKESPEARE-  273 

Miss  Smith  thinks  this  must  have  been  an  impromptu 
on  the  part  of  player  Shaksper.  But  Ingleby  says 
Shaksper  was  unknown  to  the  men  of  that  age,  and  it 
is  very  unlikely  that  impromptus  of  an  unknown 
player  at  a  public  theater  would  be  repeated  in  society. 
Some  critics  refer  these  W.  S.  verses  to  William  Smith; 
Mr.  Fleay  says  William  Sly. 

Nearly  all  the  Shakespearean  commentators  quote 
Greene's  words  on  the  upstart  crow  which  I  have  be- 
fore given  (chap.  VIII)  as  proof  that  William  Shak- 
sper was,  by  1592,  a  recognized  author  of  plays.  I 
have  shown  that  there  is  no  valid  reason  adduced  by 
Phillipps  or  Ingleby,  why  "Shake-scene"  should  be 
identified  with  player  Shaksper,  but  something  more 
maybe  said  on  the  matter.  Fleay,  no,  says:  "Mr. 
R.  Simpson  (School  of  Shakspere,  1878)  showed  that 
'beautified  with  our  feathers'  meant  acting  plays  writ- 
ten by  us,  and  he  approves  of  that  interpretation,  but 
'bombast  out  a  blank  verse'  undoubtedly  refers  to 
Shakspere  as  a  writer  also".  Even  supposing  Greene 
had  player  Shaksper  in  mind,  the  words  "bombast", 
etc.,  do  not  necessarily  or  naturally,  in  the  connection, 
mean  anything  more  than  to  spout  a  verse  on  the  stage 
in  a  noisy,  ranting,  uncouth  manner.  The  meaning  of 
bombast,  in  Webster,  is  to  swell,  or  fill  out,  to  pad,  to 
innate.  The  root  meaning  of  the  word,  to  sound,  to 
boom,  is  the  same  as  of  bomb,  and  of  bombard,  of 
which  last  bombast  is  put  down  as  a  synonym.  If  we 
may  assume  that  player  Shaksper  is  meant,  we  are  to 
understand  that  this  Jack-of- all-trades,  his  butcher's 
apron  just  sloughed  off,  and  his  language  the  patois  of 
Warwickshire,  was  making  himself  ridiculous  in 


274  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

spouting  verses  "written  by  us",  and  his  turkey-gob- 
bler strut  and  his  delivery  were  the  objects  of  Greene's 
sarcasm.  In  the  same  connection  he  speaks  of  the 
Shake-scene  as  one  of  "those  puppets  that  speak  from 
our  mouths"^  "those  antics  garnished  in  our  colors ",  those 
apes,  peasants,  painted  monsters •,  etc.  On  such  a  men- 
tion as  that  of  "bombasting  out  a  blank  verse",  to  as- 
sert, first,  that  Jack  Shaksper,  the  upstart  crow,  wrote 
Marlowe's  play  of  3  Henry  VI,  and  secondly,  that 
' 'bombasting"  implies  that  he  wrote  the  Shakespeare 
plays,  is  nonsense.  Fleay  allows  that  the  first  half  of 
the  sentence  merely  refers  to  the  antics  of  the  crow,  as 
a  player,  and  certainly  the  last  half  of  the  sentence 
serves  to  intensify  the  crow's  description.  This  is  a 
good  sample  of  the  crooked  sticks  by  which  the  Shak- 
spereans  endeavor  to  shore  up  their  theory  that  the 
crow  was  the  great  Shakespeare  himself. 

Another  thing:  Greene's  remarks  date  from  1592,  by 
which  time  the  real  '  'Shake-speare' '  had  written  sev- 
eral of  his  best  plays,  L,ove's  labour's  L,ost,  L,ove's 
Labour's  Won,  The  Comedy  of  Errors,  The  Two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona,  and  Romeo  and  Juliet  (I  follow 
Fleay,  I,  104-6).  John  Owens  thinks  that  the  first 
draft  of  Hamlet  dates  from  1585-7.  Is  there  anything 
in  these  plays  to  arouse  the  ire  of  Greene,  and  to  incite 
him  to  charge  the  author  of  them  with  "bombasting", 
in  the  sense  of  padding,  turgidity,  pompous  phraseol- 
ogy ?  Nothing  at  all.  His  words  .have  no  application 
to  such,  or  any  Shakespeare  plays.  It  was  the  crow, 
player  Shaksper,  he  was  roasting,  if  by  Shake-scene,  he 
meant  that  man.  Greene  gives  no  hint  that  he 
knew  the  player  as  man  or  author,  but  if  Shake- 


TO  SHAKESPEARE.  275 

scene  could  have  meant  that  man,  then  Greene  at- 
tacked him  simply  as  a  jack-at-all- trades,  a  puppet, 
antic,  speaking  our  words,  etc. 

This  usual  Shakesperean  interpretation  of  Greene's 
words  brings  Chettle  forward,  and  it  is  claimed  that 
what  he  says  is  of  extreme  importance  as  proving 
that  William  Shaksper  was  on  terms  of  intimacy  with 
very  great  people.  Following  Fleay,  the  case  is  this: 
Chettle  was  the  editor  of  the  posthumous  pamphlet  en- 
titled "A  Groatsworth  of  Wit",  by  Robert  Greene, 
which  begins  thus:  "Base- minded  men,  all  three  of 
you,  if  by  my  misery  ye  be  not  warned;  for  unto  none 
of  you  (like  me)  sought  those  burrs  to  cleave;  those 
puppets,  I  mean,  that  speak  from  pur  mouths,  those 
antics  garnished  in  our  colors.  Is  it  not  strange  that 
I,  to  whom  they  all  have  been  beholden;  is  it  not  like 
that  you,  to  whom  they  all  have  been  beholden, 
shall  (were  ye  in  that  case  that  I  am  now)  be 
both  at  once  of  them  forsaken  ?  Yes,  trust  them  not; 
for  there  is  an  upstart  crow,  beautified  with  our 
feathers,  that  with  his  Tyger's  heart  wrapt  in  a 
player's  hide,  supposes  he  is  as  well  able  to  bombast 
out  a  blank  verse  as  the  best  of  you;  and  being  an 
absolute  Johannes- fac-totum,  is  in  his  own  conceit  the 
only  Shake-scene  in  a  country.  O  that  I  might  en- 
treat your  rare  wits  to  be  employed  in  more  profitable 
courses;  and  let  these  apes  imitate  your  past  excel- 
lence, and  never  more  acquaint  them  with  your  ad- 
mired inventions.  ...  In  this  I  might  insert  two 
more,  that  both  have  writ  against  those  buckram  gen- 
tlemen, but  let  their  own  works  serve  to  witness 
against  their  wickedness,  if  they  perse ver  to  maintain 


276  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

any  more  such  peasants.  For  other  new  comers  I 
leave  them  to  the  mercy  of  these  painted  monsters, 
who  I  doubt  will  drive  the  best  minded  to  despise 
them." 

Greene  was  writing  on  his  death-bed,  and  the  base- 
minded  men  he  addressed,  according  to  Fleay,  are 
Marlowe,  L,odge  and  Peele,  and  the  two  more  whom 
he  might  insert,  he  says,  were  Kyd  and  Wilson. 
Ingleby  identifies  the  three  as  Marlowe,  Nash  and 
Peele. 

Fleay  says,  17:  "The  aim  of  the  oft-quoted  but 
sorely  misunderstood  address  by  Greene  to  his  fellow 
dramatists  is  directed  against  a  company  of  players, 
lburs,  puppets,  antics,  apes,  grooms,  painted  'monsters, 
peasants  J  etc.,  among  whom  is  an  'upstart  crow',  etc. 
This  is  palpably  directed  against  Shakespere  and  Lord 
Stranges*  players.  Greene  says  that  they  had  been 
beholden  to  him  and  his  fellow  writers  whom  he  ad- 
dresses." The  Manuscript  of  Greene  was  put  into 
Chettle's  hand  for  publication,  and  he  was  blamed 
personally  for  not  having  omitted  some  offensive  parts. 
Mr.  Fleay  again  speaks  of  this  matter,  no,  in:  "In 
December  following,  Chettle  issued  his  Kind  Heart's 
Dream,  in  which  he  apologizes  for  the  offense  given  to 
Marlowe  in  the  Groatsworth  of  Wit."  He  says,  Ing., 
4:  '  'About  three  months  since  died  Mr.  Robert  Greene, 
leaving  many  papers  in  sundry  bookseller's  hands, 
among  others  his  Groatsworth  of  Wit,  in  which  a  letter 
written  to  divers  playmakers,  is  offensively  by  one  or 
two  of  them  taken.  .  .  .  With  neither  of  them  that 
take  offence  was  I  acquainted,  and  with  one  of  them  I 
care  not  if  I  never  be.  The  other,  whom  at  that 


REFERENCES  TO  SHAKESPEARE.  277 

time  I  did  not  so  much  spare,  as  since  I  wish  I 
had  .  .  .  because  myself  have  seen  his  demeanor 
no  less  civil  than  he  excellent  in  the  quality  he  pro- 
fesses. Besides  divers  of  worship  have  reported  his 
uprightness  of  dealing  which  argues  his  honesty,  and 
his  facetious  grace  in  writing  that  approves  his  art. ' ' 
Fleay,  on  this,  in,  says:  "To  Peele,  he  makes  no 
apology.  Shakspere  was  not  one  of  those  who  took 
offence;  they  are  expressly  stated  to  have  been  two 
of  the  three  authors  addressed  by  Greene,  the  third 
(I^odge)  not  being  in  England."  Why  the  Shakspe- 
reans  should  ever  have  appropriated  the  complimentary 
remarks  of  Chettle  on  Marlowe  to  Shaksper  is  not 
clear,  unless  it  can  be  explained  on  the  general  prin- 
ciple of  grabbing  everything  in  sight  that  can  help  the 
Stratford  man — the  principle  that  makes  capital  out  of 
forged  plays,  forged  signatures,  forged  dates  of  plays 
performed,  forged  statements  as  to  the  theaters  Shak- 
sper played,  or  owned  a  share,  in,  fraudulent  letters  of 
introduction,  bogus  death  masks,  spurious  portraits 
(vide  Rolfe's  Shakespeare,  the  Boy,  for  one),  etc.,  etc. 
These  words  of  Chettle  referring  to  Marlowe,  have 
been  time  and  again  quoted  triumphantly  by  the 
Shaksperolaters  as  evidence  that  William  Shaksper 
had  a  facetious  grace  in  writing;  that  he  was  reported 
on  by  divers  of  worship  for  his  uprightness  of  dealing, 
which  argues  his  honesty. 

Mrs.  Ball  adduces  it  as  showing  that  the  player  man 
"was  petted  and  courted  by  the  nobility."  Anybody 
could  see,  one  would  suppose,  that  Greene  was  talking 
of  his  associate  play-wrights.  When  he  spoke  of 
Shaksper,  if  Shake-scene  is  Shaksper,  it  was  as  a 


278  SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKKSPKARE. 

player,  a  burr,  ape,  crow,  peasant,  painted  monster. 
Mr.  Fleay  stated  more  than  ten  years  ago  (1886)  that 
there  was  an  entire  misconception  as  to  Chettle's 
language,  but  the  recent  Shakesperean  writers  claim 
Chettle's  testimony,  as  if  Mr.  Fleay  had  never  existed, 
and  as  if,  moreover,  the  words  of  Greene  and  Chettle 
were  not  accessible  to  all  inquirers.  Let  the  believers 
that  Shaksper  was  reported  on  by  divers  of  worship 
produce  an  invitation  to  dinner,  or  to  house,  from  any 
one  of  worship,  or  not  of  worship,  for  that  matter,  any 
gentleman  or  reputable  citizen — the  briefest  form  would 
do;  or  any  letter  in  which  the  writer  says  he  has  seen, 
or  met,  or  talked  with,  the  accomplished  player  from 
the  Curtain  or  the  Globe,  author  of  the  wonderful 
Shakespeare  plays  now  astonishing  the  public.  Where 
are  these  letters  and  reports  of  contemporaries  ?  Echo, 
in  her  old  fashion,  answers  where  ? — and  there  falls  a 
dead  silence. 

There  are  thirty  allusions  to,  or  mentions  of,  plays, 
some  of  which  cover  several  plays,  as  that  of  Francis 
Meres,  presently  to  be  quoted,  who  gives  the  names  of 
twelve  in  one  paragraph,  but  without  a  word  of  com- 
ment; also  that  of  William  Drummond,  who  names 
three;  of  Simon  For  man,  three  (or  plays  with  similar 
names);  and  lyord  Treasurer  Stanhope,  five.  Often 
the  allusions  are  very  obscure,  and  not  one  of  the 
thirty  carries  a  thought  of  the  author  of  the  plays. 
As  an  example,  Thomas  Acherley,  1602,  p.  52: 

Whilst  that  my  glory  midst  the  clouds  was  hid, 
Like  to  a  jewel  in  an  Bthiop's  ear; 

the  allusion  being  supposed  to  be  to  Romeo  and  Juliet 


TO   SHAKESPEARE.  279 

— but   perhaps   to  an  older  play  of   that  name  than 
Shakspeare's.     On   p.    114,    Anonymous:    "Sir  John 
Falstaff  robbed  with  a  bottle  of  sack". 
Of  obscure  reference,  p.  101: 

The  Cross  his  stage  was,  and  he  played  the  part, 
Of  one  that  for  his  friend,  did  pawn  his  heart. 

The  one  being  supposed  to  be  Antonio  in  the  Mer- 
chant of  Venice. 
So,  p.  107: 

And  if  it  proves  so  happy  as  to  please, 
We'll  say  't  is  fortunate,  like  Pericles; 

the  reference  being  supposed  to  be  to  the  Shakespeare 
play  of  Pericles,  though  there  was  another  Pericles 
play.  There  is  not  in  one  of  the  allusions  to  plays  or 
poems,  or  both  together,  any  more  than  the  mention 
by  name  of  certain  of  the  works  or  praises  of  them. 
There  is  nothing  that  speaks  of  the  author  as  any  one 
known  to  the  writer,  nor  is  there  a  word  that  con- 
nects poems  or  plays  with  the  player  Shaksper.  If 
any  one  supposed,  up  to  1623,  that  player  and  author 
were  the  same  person,  he  does  not  say  so,  and  the  fact 
that  no  one  said  so  is  warrant  for  believing  that  no  one 
thought  so.  The  myth  had  not  got  a  start.  Thus, 
p.  16,  John  Weever,  1595:  "Honie-tong'd  Shake- 
speare, when  I  saw  thine  issue",  etc.  Or  Francis 
Meres,  p.  21,  1598:  "As  the  Greeke  tongue  is  made 
famous  and  eloquent  by  Homer,  Hesiod,  etc.,  and  the 
L,atin  language  by  Virgil,  Ovid,  etc. ,  so  the  English 
language  is  mightily  enriched  ...  by  Sidney, 
Spenser,  Daniel,  Shake-speare,  Marlowe,  Chapman, 
etc. 


2 So         SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

"As  the  soul  of  Kuphorbus  was  thought  to  live  in 
Pythagoras,  so  the  sweete,  wittie,  soul  of  Ovid  lives 
in  mellifluous  and  honey- tongued  Shakespeare:  wit- 
ness his  Venus  and  Adonis, ' '  etc. 

This  sort  of  eulogy  does  not  give  one  shred  of  help 
to  settle  the  question  of  the  authorship  of  the  Shake- 
speare poems  and  plays. 

Suppose  that  a  writer  of  1858  had  thus  expressed 
himself:  "As  the  Greek  tongue  is  made  famous  and 
eloquent  by  Homer,  etc.,  and  the  L,atin  tongue  by 
Virgil,  Ovid,  etc.,  so  is  the  English  tongue  mightily 
enriched  by  Dickens,  Thackeray  and  George  Kliot,"  the 
latter  being  the  nom  de  plume  of  an  author  of  that 
period,  whose  personality  was  unknown.  "George 
Kliot"  was  a  name,  nothing  more,  and  "William 
Shakespeare"  was  a  name  and  nothing  more.  To  say 
that  William  Shakespeare  and  George  Eliot  had  en- 
riched the  English  tongue  means  simply  that  their 
works  deserve  the  highest  praise.  In  neither  was 
there  a  thought  of  the  author,  the  individual ;  the 
thought  was  of  the  works  alone.  To  claim  that  such 
a  mention  of  George  Eliot  connects  or  identifies  that 
name  with  a  low  comedian  or  minstrel  of  that  period, 
whose  name  chanced  to  be  George  Eliot,  or  Elyot, 
and  is  proof  that  the  comedian  was  the  author  of  the 
Mill  on  the  Floss,  and  Adam  Bede,  would  manifestly 
be  absurd.  Just  so,  to  claim  that  the  mention  of 
Meres,  Barnfeild,  Harvey  and  others — all  to  the  works 
of  William  Shakespeare,  with  no  thought  of  the  in- 
dividual, connects  that  author  with  William  Shaksper 
the  player,  is  no  less  absurd. 

Another  is  Edmund  Bolton,  1610,  p.  91:   ",   .   .  For- 


REFERENCES   TO   SHAKESPEARE.  281 

asmuch  as  the  people's  judgments  are  uncertain,  the 
books  out  of  which  we  gather  the  most  warrantable 
English,  are  not  many  to  my  remembrance. 
But  among  the  chief,  or  rather  the  chief,  are  in  my 
opinion,  these:  Sir  Thomas  More's  works,  George 
Chapman's  first  seven  books  of  Iliades,  Samuel  Dan- 
yel,  Michael  Dray  ton  his  Heroical  Epistles  of  England, 
Marlowe  his  excellent  fragment  of  Hero  and  L,eander, 
Shakespeare,  Mr.  Francis  Beaumont  and  innumerable 
other  writers  for  the  stage."  Here  is  no  intimation 
that  the  player  is  the  writer  of  the  plays.  The  name 
Shakespeare  is  cited  as  one  of  the  authors  "out  of 
whom  we  gather  the  most  warrantable  English";  and 
that  is  right,  for  from  the  Shakespeare  plays  are  cer- 
tainly to  be  gathered  that  thing. 

Another  is  Thomas  Freeman,  1614,  p.  106: 

Shakespeare,  that  nimble  Mercury,  thy  brain, 

Lulls  many  hundred  Argus-eyes  asleep, 

So  fit,  for  all  thou  fashionest  thy  vein, 

At  the  horse-foote  fountain  thou  hast  drunk  full  deep, 

Virtues  or  vices,  these  to  thee  all  one  is; 

Who  loves  chaste  life,  there  is  Lucrece  fora  teacher; 

Who  list  read  lust,  there's  Venus  and  Adonis. 

Besides  in  plays  thy  wit  winds  like  Meander; 

Whence  needy  new-composers  borrow  more 

Than  Terence  doth  from  Plautus  or  Meander. 

But  to  praise  thee  aright  I  want  thy  store; 

Then  let  thine  own  works  thine  own  worth  upraise, 

And  help  t'  adorne  thee  with  deserved  bays." 

What  this  has  to  do  with  William  Shaksper,  I  do 
not  see.  It  is  evident  however,  that  Freeman  held 
the  author  of  Venus  and  Adonis  to  have  written 
plays,  not  specified,  and  he  judged  correctly.  That 


282  SHAKSPER   NOT 

author  was  Marlowe,  and  he  wrote  Edward  III,  and 
many  other  plays. 

Ingleby  well  says:  "The  absence  of  sundry  great 
names  with  which  no  pains  of  research,  scrutiny,  or 
study,  could  connect  the  most  trivial  allusion  to  the 
bard  or  his  works  (such  e.  g.,  as  lyord  Brooke, 
L,ord  Bacon,  Selden,  Sir  John  Beaumont,  Henry 
Vaughan,  and  I^ord  Clarendon)  is  tacitly  significant, 
the  iteration  of  the  same  vapid  and  affected  compli- 
ments, couched  in  conventional  terms,  from  writers  of 
the  first  two  periods,  (1598-1643)  comparing  Shake- 
speare's "tongue",  "pen",  or  "vein",  to  silver,  honey, 
sugar,  or  nectar,  while  they  ignore  his  greater  and  dis- 
tinguishing qualities,  is  expressly  significant  It  is 
plain,  for  one  thing,  that  the  bard  of  our  admiration 
was  unknown  to  the  men  of  that  age".  Preface. 

And  again:  "Assuredly,  no  one  during  the  Centurie 
had  any  suspicion  that  the  genius  of  Shakespeare  was 
unique,  and  that  he  was  sui  generis,  i.  e. ,  the  only  ex- 
emplar of  his  species.  Those  who  ranked  him  very  high 
compared  him  to  Spenser,  Sydney,  Chapman,  Jonson, 
Fletcher,  and  even  lesser  lights,  and  most  of  the  judges 
of  the  time  assigned  the  first  place  to  one  of  them' ' . 
Note  this  remarkable  admission  by  Dr.  Ingleby,  that 
during  the  hundred  years  from  the  appearance  of  the 
Shakespeare  plays,  no  one  had  discovered  that  the 
genius  of  "William  Shakespeare",  was  unique,  or 
even  suspected  it.  The  plays  had  achieved  no  special 
reputation,  and  as  the  Dr.  says,  by  most  of  the  judges 
they  were  ranked  below  the  productions  of  several 
other  authors.  It  seems  impossible  in  the  light  of 
to-day  that  this  could  have  been  so,  but  the  Centurie 


REFERENCES  TO  SHAKESPEARE.  283 

of  Prayse  substantiates  Ingleby's  assertion,  and  there 
is  no  gainsaying  it. 

We  do  not  need  to  be  told,  that  the  Venus  and 
Adonis  is  mellifluous,  or  that  Love's  Labour  's  Lost  is 
excellent  for  the  stage.  Dr.  Ingleby  might  as  well 
bring  authorities  to  prove  that  Elizabeth  was  a  well- 
known  queen.  \Ve  have  the  poems  and  plays,  and 
can  judge  of  their  quality  ourselves.  But  this  is  what 
a  large  part  of  the  Doctor's  references  tell,  and 
nothing  more.  No  one  disputes  the  fact  that  these 
works  appeared  between  1587  and  1623,  and  there 
was  no  need  of  citing  a  multitude  of  witnesses  to 
that  matter.  What  we  do  want  to  know  is,  who  was 
William  Shakespeare,  the  author  of  these  plays,  for 
that  the  name  concealed  his  personality  is  manifest. 
We  know  that  he  was  the  son  of  a  gentleman,  and 
brought  up  as  a  gentleman;  that  he  had  a  thorough 
education;  that  he  had  studied  and  traveled  abroad; 
that  he  owned  or  had  access  to  all  books,  ancient  or 
modern — because,  as  Dr.  Baynes  says  of  the  Venus 
and  Adonis,  and  its  author's  profound  classical  edu- 
cation, the  plays  themselves  give  evidence  of  all  these 
things.  We  should  have  liked  to  see  him  in  his 
privacy,  working  at  one  of  these  plays,  should  have 
liked  to  hear  him  talk,  should  have  been  delighted  at 
reading  a  letter  from  his  hand.  If  Drs.  Ingleby  and 
Furnivall,  or  Miss  Smith,  had  given  us  something  of 
this  sort,  there  would  have  been  sense  in  these  refer- 
ences. Here  were  plays  coming  out  rapidly  for 
thirty-six  years,  1587-1623,  master-pieces  in  litera- 
ture. During  the  first  twenty-nine,  or  from  1587- 
1616,  there  are,  according  to  Ingleby,  65  mentions  of 


284  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE}. 

or  allusions  to  the  poems  and  plays  (some  so  obscure 
that  it  takes  a  keen  scented  Shakespearean  to  discover 
them),  and  but  thirty  of  these  to  the  plays  alone 
in  all  contemporary  literature,  or  in  journals,  note- 
books ("an  age  of  common  place  books",  H.-P.  I, 
275),  records  and  correspondence.  That  makes,  count- 
ing everything  cited  by  Ingleby  and  Miss  Smith,  good, 
bad,  or  indifferent,  scarcely  more  than  two  mentions 
per  year  to  both  poems  and  plays,  or  to  author  Shake- 
speare by  name,  and  but  one  mention  per  year  of  the 
plays.  Counting  the  twenty-one  Fresh  Allusions 
given  by  Furnivall  for  the  same  period,  there  are  less 
than  two  mentions  of  the  plays  per  year.  As  I  have 
before  said,  two  or  more  plays  are  sometimes  included 
in  one  of  Ingleby 's  mentions,  and  separating  them,  in 
such  cases,  there  are  88  mentions  or  references  to 
single  plays.  Thus; 

Richard  III,  in  the  29  years,  is  spoken  of 9  times. 

Hamlet,  and  Romeo  and  Juliet,  each, 8     " 

The  Comedy  of  Errors,  Henry  IV,  Part  2nd,  Love's 
Labour 's  Lost,  Richard  II,  each, 5  " 

Henry  IV.  Part  I,  Julius  Caesar,  Pericles,  each,. . .  4     " 

Henry  VI,  Merchant  of  Venice,  Macbeth,  Tem- 
pest, Titus  Andronicus,  Winter's  Tale,  each, 3  " 

Cymbeline,  King  John,  Midsummer  Night's  Dream, 
each, 2  " 

Henry  V,  Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  Taming  of 
the  Shrew,  Troilus  and  Cressida,  Twelfth  Night, 
Antony  and  Cleopatra,  Love's  Labour 's  Won, 
(All 's  Well,  etc.)  each, I  " 

That  is,  what  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  most 
popular  Shakespeare  play,  Richard  III,  in  29  years 
is  spoken  of  but  nine  times,  or  once  in  three  years; 


REFERENCES  TO  SHAKESPEARE. 

Hamlet  aud  Romeo,  but  eight  times;  Love's  Labour 's 
Lost,  the  first  play  of  the  series,  but  four  times,  or 
once  in  seven  years;  Merchant  of  Venice  and  Macbeth, 
once  in  nearly  ten  years;  Henry  V,  supposed  to  have 
been  amazingly  popular,  but  once  in  the  whole  period. 
This  is  a  very  singular  state  of  things.  Plays  alleged 
by  Phillipps  to  have  taken  the  town  by  storm,  "to 
have  been  the  talk  of  the  town' ' ,  as  if  every  soul  were 
hurry  ing  to  the  Curtain  or  the  Globe,  or  discussing  these 
wonderful  things,  are  found  to  have  been  spoken  of 
or  alluded  to  in  all  contemporaneous  literature  on  an 
average  of  the  whole,  about  three  times  in  twenty- 
nine  years.  I  have  been  astonished  at  the  results  of 
an  examination  of  the  Centurie  of  Prayse.  I  had  sup- 
posed that  "William  Shakespeare",  though  writing 
under  an  assumed  name,  and  personally  unknown, 
was  not  without  honor  in  his  own  age;  that  all  literary 
England  had  recognized  the  rising  of  a  great  drama- 
tist, and  that  he  soon  took  his  place  as  the  brightest 
star  in  the  dramatic  constellation.  Far  from  it.  No 
one  observed  the  rising,  no  one  cared  for  the  plays,  or 
gave  a  thought  to  their  author.  There  is  not  a  hint 
in  Ingleby  or  Furnivall  that  any  one  considered  it 
worth  while  to  inquire  who  was  writing  under  the 
name  "William  Shakespeare."  Apparently  these 
plays  attracted  no  more  attention  in  England  than  if 
they  had  appeared  in  a  foreign  country.  Collectively, 
they  were  never  spoken  of.  It  is  true  that  Francis 
Meres,  1598,  enumerated  twelve  plays  by  name,  which 
were  attributed  to  "Shakespeare",  but  two,  if  not 
three,  of  them  were  written  by  Marlowe,  and  able 
critics  assign  others  to  different  authors.  To  say  that 


2$6  SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

a  play  was  ( 'Shakespeare's",  in  1598,  was  equivalent 
to  saying  that  it  was  written  by  a  club  of  play-wrights, 
who  chose  to  be  hidden  under  a  sobriquet. 

All  mentions  are  of  the  separate  plays,  and  they 
might  have  been  written  by  as  many  different  authors, 
for  all  that  has  come  down  to  us.  No  one  ever  wrote, 
'  'the  author  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  has  written  a  new 
play,  called  Midsummer  Night's  Dream",  etc.,  but 
each  play  is  spoken  of  as  if  it  had  no  connection  with 
any  other.  This  condition  obtained  till  the  plays 
were  collected  and  published  in  the  Folio  of  1623. 
Until  that  year,  there  were  no  "works"  of  William 
Shakespeare. 

It  is  clear  enough  that  separately  or  collectively,  the 
Shakespeare  plays,  up  to  1616,  had  no  reputation  at 
all — that  they  were  unknown.  So  Dr.  Ingleby  says: 
"It  is  plain  that  the  bard  of  our  admiration  was  un- 
known to  the  men  of  that  age' ' ;  and  this  bard  cer- 
tainly did  not  set  people  talking  about  him  or  his 
plays.  Fleay  says:  "Allusions  to  his  works  will  be 
found  collected  in  Dr.  Ingleby 's  Centurie  of  Prayse; 
but  they  consist  almost  entirely  of  slight  references. 
Neither  as  addressed  to  him  by  others,  nor 
by  him  to  others,  do  any  commendatory  verses  ex- 
ist in  connection  with  any  of  his  or  any  other  men's 
works  published  in  his  life- time."  That  is  to  say,  he 
never  wrote  a  line  in  praise  of  the  works  of  a  con- 
temporary, and  no  contemporary  wrote  a  line  in 
praise  of  his  works,  before  1623.  Certainly,  a  sur- 
prising fact!  As  I  said  before,  Shakespeare,  author 
of  the  plays — not  the  player — was  without  honor  in 


REFERENCES   TO   SHAKESPEARE. 

his  own  age;  nobody  cared  for  the  plays,  or  thought 
them  worth  notice. 

Many  persons  have  wondered  that  Francis  Bacon 
should  not  have  spoken  of,  or  seemed  to  know,  a  con- 
temporary whose  writings  were  steeped  in  his  own 
philosophy,  particularly  as  every  other  literary  man  of 
his  time  in  England  is  mentioned  in  his  correspond- 
ence, or  his  published  works.  But  Ingleby  proves  in- 
controvertibly,  that  nobody  observed  or  appreciated 
the  plays,  and  this  being  so,  there  was  no  reason  why 
Bacon  should  speak  of  works  or  writer.  If  in  a 
future  century,  searching  all  literature  between  1850 
and  1890,  the  name  and  works  of  Alfred  Tennyson 
should  be  discovered  as  spoken  of  but  once  or  twice  a 
year,  it  would  argue  himself  and  works  unknown. 
Just  so  with  Shakespeare  and  his  plays.  It  was  only 
after  many  years,  and  after  several  generations  of  men 
had  passed  away,  that  they  came  to  have  the  reputation 
they  have  to-day. 

Dr.  Ingleby 's  book  was  undertaken  solely  to  try  and 
make  a  case  for  the  Stratford  man,  to  father  the  poems 
and  plays  on  him.  And  what  success  has  he  met  with  ? 
For  twenty-five  years,  this  man  was  engaged  at  his 
trade  in  London  and  the  provinces  (1587-1616),  and 
three  of  his  contemporaries  in  all  these  years  are  found 
to  have  spoken  of  him,  and  no  man  ever  spoke  of  him 
a  second  time.  One  said  he  was  a  hunks;  one  tells  a 
tale  which  shows  him  to  have  been  an  adulterer;  a 
third  says  he  would  have  been  a  decent  fellow  had  he 
not  been  a  player.  That  makes  one  mention  of  him 
every  nine  years  and  eight  months.  Nineteen  years 
after  his  death,  and  twenty-five  after  his  return  to 


288  SHAKSP3R    NOT 

Stratford,  one  old  man  bethinks  him  that  he  used  to 
call  the  player  Will,  and  that  he  had  an  enchanting 
quill  that  commanded  mirth  or  passion,  and  was  a  mel- 
lifluous fellow.  Had  Heywood  testified  that  this  was 
the  man  who  wrote  Twelfth  Night  or  L,ear,  we  should 
know  a  good  deal  more  than  we  do  now.  To  say  that 
he  had  an  enchanting  quill,  because  the  writer  needed 
a  word  to  rhyme  with  Will,  carries  no  meaning  with 
it,  nor  does  it  to  say  that  he  was  mellifluous.  Probably 
Heywood  meant  that  the  player  was  a  delightful  and 
persuasive  fellovr  when  he  had  wet  his  whistle.  And 
yet  this  mention  by  Heywood  is  interpreted  by  the 
willing  Shaksperolaters  to  mean  that  here  at  last  is  a 
certificate  to  Shaksper's  authorship  of  the  Shakespeare 
plays.  "He  was  a  mellifluous  fellow,  and  I  will  say, 
in  order  to  get  the  proper  rhyme,  that  he  had  an  en- 
chanting quill."  That  means,  (it  appears)  that  Shak- 
sper  wrote  Lear  and  Midsummer  Night's  Dream. 
Suppose  we  grant  that  the  player  ever  learned  to 
write,  and  got  so  far  that  he  could  use  a  quill,  an  ac- 
complishment which  I  deny  that  he  ever  possessed,  may 
not  Heywood  have  had  in  mind  the  Hog  in  Armour,  or 
the  Comedy  of  George- a- Green  ?  Where  does  a  Shake- 
speare play  come  in?  The  last  of  the  plays  just  men- 
tioned, was  printed  as  done  ' 'by  William  Shakespeare", 
and  up  to  the  issue  of  the  Folio,  there  was  as  much 
reason  for  attributing  it  to  Shakespeare  as  Hamlet,  or 
Lear. 

The  three  references  given  above  are  all  that  Dr. 
Ingleby  has  been  able  to  find  from  1587  to  1616,  re- 
lating to  the  player.  Halliwell-Phillipps  believes,  how- 
ever, that  there  is  another  reference  to  the  man,  not 


REFERENCES   TO   SHAKESPEARE.  289 

given  by  lugleby,  thus:  "In  May,  1602,  the  dramatist 
bought  from  William  and  John  Combe  for  ^320,  one 
hundred  and  seven  acres  of  land  near  Stratford-on- 
Avon."  Halliwell-Phillipps  says  "it  may  have  been 
that  this  acquisition  is  referred  to  by  Crosse  in  his 
Vertues  Commonwealth,  1603,  when  he  speaks  thus 
ungenerously  of  the  actors  and  dramatists  of  the  pe- 
riod; as  'these  copper- laced  gentlemen  growe  rich, 
purchase  lands  by  adulterous  plays — and  not  a  few  of 
them  usurers  and  extortioners  which  they  exhaust  out 
of  the  purses  of  their  haunters, ' ' '  etc. ,  etc. 

We  can  trust  the  judgment  of  Mr.  Halliwell-Phil- 
lipps, and  doubtless  here  is  another  contemporary  tes- 
timony, though  not  found  in  Ingleby  nor  Furnivall,  to 
the  character  of  the  man  Shaksper. 

Venus  and  Adonis  had  appeared  in  1593,  and  Lu- 
crece  a  year  after.  The  authorities  agree  that  in 
Elizabeth's  day  poets  above  all  others  honored  a  lan- 
guage, while  writers  of  plays  were  very  low  company. 
Fleay  says:  "The  writing  of  poems  was  fit  work  for  a 
prince,  but  of  plays  was  only  congruous  with  strolling 
vagabondism' ' ;  and  Phillipps  tells  us  that  the  writers 
of  plays  stood  very  close  to  the  level  of  buffoons 
and  tumblers.  The  Shakespeare  poems  at  once  ex- 
cited interest,  and  edition  after  edition  poured  from 
the  press,  always  bearing  the  name  of  "William 
Shakespeare".  How  comes  it  then  that  John  Man- 
ningham,  of  the  Middle  Temple,  Barrister-at-law,  re- 
cording in  his  diary  that  naughty  story  of  player 
Shakespere,  should  not  have  mentioned  him  as  the 
writer  of  the  splendid  poems  which  all  the  world  has 
read  or  is  reading,  and  should  consider  it  necessary  to 


SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

append  to  the  entry  "Shakespere' s  name  William";  as 
if  one  should  enter  in  a  note-book  ' 'Scott's  name 
Walter",  "Burns'  name  Robert"!  In  penning  the 
name  Shakespere,  the  writer's  thought  would  turn 
naturally  to  the  well-known  poet;  and  player  and 
poet  would  have  been  associated  in  his  mind.  The 
fact  is,  there  exists  no  evidence  that  any  man  of  that 
generation  thought  player  Shaksper,  or  '  'Shakespere' ' , 
as  Manningham  wrote  it,  was  the  individual  whose 
name,  "William  Shakespeare",  stood  on  the  title 
pages  of  the  poems.  Had  the  literary  public  known 
that  the  great  poet  was  a  hireling  at  the  Curtain, 
compelled  to  prance  in  "Kempe's  jigges"  before  an 
ignorant  public  theater  audience  to  earn  his  daily 
bread  (see  charming  cut  of  Kempe,  before  given), 
curiosity  would  have  made  cultivated  persons  eager  to 
get  a  sight  of  him,  and  many  an  offer  of  assistance 
and  place  would  have  been  urged  on  him.  Great 
noblemen  would  have  contended  for  him,  Elizabeth 
would  have  provided  for  him,  and  the  records  of  the 
time  would  have  repeatedly  spoken  of  William  Shake- 
speare. There  is  nothing  of  the  kind;  Manningham, 
in  effect,  says:  "I  heard  a  good  story  the  other  day  of 
a  player- fellow  named  Shakespere;  who  he  is  I  know 
not  except  that  his  Christian  name  is  William,  and 
he  hangs  out  at  the  Curtain. ' ' 

William  Shakespeare,  the  poet  and  play-wright,  was 
unknown  to  the  men  of  that  age.  Dr.  Ingleby  is  at 
the  pains  to  tell  us  so  emphatically,  although  ten 
editions  of  the  poems,  bearing  his  name  on  the  title 
page,  were  launched  upon  the  country  between  1593 
and  1616.  Nobody  knew  who  Shakespeare  was;  no- 


REFERENCES   TO   SHAKESPEARE.  29! 

body  had  seen  him  or  was  reported  as  having  talked 
with  him.  His  personality  was  as  impenetrable  as  later 
was  that  of  Junius. 

But,  on  the  contrary,  William  Shaksper,  the  player, 
was  well  known  to  certain  classes  of  the  men  of  that 
age,  and  Ingleby's  remarks  have  no  application  to 
him.  For  a  score  of  years, he  had  been  as  conspicuous 
in  connection  with  the  theaters  as  were  Kempe  and 
Tarleton.  He  had  repeatedly  strolled  with  his  com- 
pany through  every  shire  in  England.  The  only 
possible  conclusion  is  that  this  player  Shaksper  was 
not  known  as  the  author  of  the  poems  or  plays.  Had 
he  been,  there  is  no  conceivable  reason  for  making  a 
mystery  of  the  matter.  According  to  his  admirers, 
he  thought  no  more  of  the  plays  he  wrote  than  the 
turtle  does  of  the  eggs  which  it  lays  in  the  sand.  He 
tossed  them  off  as  the  need  of  the  theater  demanded, 
and  left  them  to  shift  for  themselves. 

After  player  Shaksper 's  death,  in  1616,  there  is 
scarcely  a  mention  of  him  extant  by  any  one  who  had 
known  him  personally.  No  cultivated  gentleman  had 
cared  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  a  man  whose  de- 
spised life  profession  put  him  on  the  level  with  jug- 
glers, tumblers  and  buffoons,  even  were  there  no  other 
reason.  What  mentions  there  are,  are  almost  ex- 
clusively contained  in  the  elegiac  and  eulogistic  prose 
or  verse  prefixed  to  the  First  Folio,  by  order  of  the 
printers,  and  again  to  the  2nd  Folio,  in  1632.  The 
writers  in  the  two  cases  were  in  part  the  same.  They 
all  seemed  to  claim  that  player  and  author  were  one 
individual.  For  reasons,  presently  given  (Ch.  XI), 


2Q2  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

this  entire  mass  of   testimony  is  worthless,  and  de- 
serves no  consideration. 

In  1622,  William  Basse,  (Ingleby,   136)  wrote  the 
following  lines:     "On  Mr.  William  Shakespeare;  he 
died  in  April,  1616". 
Another  elegiac  effusion: 

"Sleep,  rare  Tragedian,  Shakespeare,  sleep  alone, 
Thy  unmolested  peace,  unshared  cave 
Possess  as  Lord,  not  tenant,  of  thy  grave, 
That  unto  us  and  others  it  may  be 
Honor  hereafter  to  be  laid  by  thee." 

Certainly  there  is  no  light  here  on  the  authorship  of 
the  plays.  '  'Tragedian' '  is  the  appellation  of  a  tragic 
actor,  as  the  tragedian  Booth.  Ingleby,  3,  makes  it 
the  equivalent  of  "Shake-scene"  of  Greene's  diatribe, 
and  for  illustration  he  quotes  Jonson's  line  from  the 
preface  to  the  First  Folio  (as  before  stated  in  Chap.  VI) : 

"to  hear  thy  Buskin  tread 
And  shake  a  Stage." 

Also  a  passage  from  The  Puritaine,  1607:  "Have 
you  never  seen  a  stalking-stamping  Player,  that  will 
raise  a  tempest  with  his  toung  and  thunder  with  his 
heels?"  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Basse 
meant  anything  more  than  a  compliment  to  the  de- 
parted player — as  a  player. 

In  Sir  Richard  Baker's  "Chronicle  of  the  Kings  of 
Kngland  .  .  .  unto  the  Death  of  King  James", 
1643,  is  a  list  of  men  of  note  in  Elizabeth's  time 
("the  ocean  is  not  more  boundless  than  the  number 
of  men  of  note  of  her  time")  the  statesmen,  soldiers, 
naval  commanders  and  sailors,  orators,  men  of  learn- 
ing, writers,  poets,  theologians,  etc.,  etc.,  but  among 


REFERENCES  TO   SHAKESPEARE.  293 

the  poets  is  no  such,  name  as  William  Shakespeare. 
The  chronicler  appends  to  his  list  this  sentence: 
'  'After  such  men  it  might  be  thought  ridiculous  to 
speak  of  stage-players;  but  seeing  excellency  in  the 
meanest  thing  deserves  remembering  ...  it  may 
be  allowed  to",  etc.  He  then  mentions  Richard  Bur- 
bage,  and  Edward  Allen  as  "such  actors  as  no  age 
must  ever  look  to  see  the  like;"  and  Richard  Tarleton 
for  the  clown's  part  "never  had  his  match,  never  will 
have."  "For  writers  of  plays,  and  such  as  have  been 
players  themselves,  William  Shakespeare  and  Ben- 
jamin Jonson  have  especially  left  their  names  remem- 
bered to  posterity." 

Spoken  thirty-two  years  after  William  Shaksper 
left  the  Globe  Theater,  this  is  feeble  and  wholly  in- 
adequate testimony  as  to  that  man's  authorship  of  the 
Shakespeare  plays.  Baker  may  have  accepted  the  as- 
surances of  the  Folio  that  the  player  wrote  these  plays, 
but  he  knew  nothing  of  him  as  the  author  of  the 
Venus  and  Adonis,  or  the  Sonnets.  He  overlooks  the 
poet  completely,  and,  apologizing  for  mentioning  so 
mean  a  thing  as  a  stage-player,  of  whom  it  might  be 
thought  "ridiculous  to  speak",  introduces  Shaksper 
along  with  Burbage  and  the  clown,  Tarleton.  Of  the 
William  Shakespeare  of  the  Venus  and  Adonis  Baker 
knew  nothing  at  all. 

This  is  all  that  any  one  said  after  the  player's  death. 
There  are,  however,  plenty  of  testimonies  to  Shaksper 
in  his  business  capacity,  as  the  trader,  money-lender, 
the  litigant,  the  rich  man,  but  in  a  literary  capacity, 
there  is  nothing.  And  yet  there  have  been  multitudes 
of  men  and  women  who  have  worked  like  beavers  to 


294  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKKSPKARE. 

make  this  ignorant  strolling  player  to  be  the  author  of 
the  greatest  and  the  most  learned  works  of  imagina- 
tion and  philosophy  in  the  language;  men  and  women, 
who  had  they  met  the  man  on  the  L,ondon  streets,  in 
1597,  or  at  any  time,  would  have  scorned  to  touch  his 
hand,  or  to  be  known  as  his  acquaintance. 

The  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  is,  that  not  one 
of  player  Shaksper's  contemporaries  testified  in  print 
or  in  correspondence,  that  he,  Shaksper,  was  the 
author  of  these  works.  "He  was  unknown  to  the 
men  of  that  age";  a  significant  fact.  According  to 
the  modern  view,  he  spent  more  than  twenty  years  in 
writing  the  most  wonderful  poems  and  plays  poet 
ever  put  his  hand  to,  and  not  an  allusion  in  contem- 
porary literature  tells  the  future  generations  that  he 
was  known  as  an  author  at  all.  Jonson  was  known 
as  an  author,  as  were  Beaumont,  Greene,  Marlowe, 
and  scores  of  others,  and  there  is  abundant  contem- 
porary testimony  to  every  one  of  these;  but  no  one 
knew  and  testified  that  William  Shaksper,  one  of  the 
most  prolific  authors  then  living,  if  he  really  wrote  the 
Shakespeare  plays,  was  an  author  at  all.  The  fact  is, 
the  theory  that  William  Shaksper  wrote  the  poems 
and  plays  originated  after  his  death,  and  developed  in 
the  following  century,  regardless  of  evidence  and  pos- 
sibility. 

Mr.  T.  W.  White  believes  that  Dr.  Ingleby  has 
omitted  from  his  Centurie  two  of  the  most  important 
allusions  to  player  Shaksper  in  contemporary  authors, 
one  of  which  is  to  be  found  in  the  Return  from  Par- 
nassus, 1604.  H.-P.,  I,  212,  tells  us  that  "it  was  on 
the  1 5th  of  March,  1604,  that  James  undertook  his 


REFERENCES   TO   SHAKESPEARE.  295 

formal  march  from  the  Tower  to  Westminster.  .  .  . 
In  the  royal  train  were  the  nine  actors  to  whom  the 
special  license  had  been  granted  the  previous  year,  in- 
cluding of  course  Shakespeare"  (Shaksper)  "and  his 
three  friends,  Burbage,  Heminge  and  Condell.  Each 
of  them  were  presented  with  four  yards  and  a  half  of 
scarlet  cloth,  the  usual  dress  allowance  to  players  be- 
longing to  the  household."  It  is  believed  that  this 
affair  is  referred  to  in  the  Return  from  Parnassus 
here  given: 

"Better  it  is  among  fiddlers  to  be  chief, 
Than  at  a  player's  trencher  beg  relief. 
But  is  't  not  strange  those  mimic  apes  should  prize 
Unhappy  scholars  at  a  hireling's  rate? 
Vile  world,  that  lifts  them  up  to  high  degree, 
But  treads  us  down  in  grovelling  misery. 
England  affords  those  glorious  vagabonds 
That  carried  erst  their  fardels  on  their  backs, 
Coursers  to  ride  on  through  the  gazing  streets, 
Scoping  it  in  their  glaring  satin  suits, 
And  pages  to  attend  their  masterships. 
With  mou thing  words  that  better  wits  have  framed 
They  purchase  lands,  and  now  esquires  are  made." 

Reed  says  (43):  "No  other  actor  (than  Shaksper) 
is  known  at  that  time  to  have  possessed  large  landed 
estates,  or  aspired  to  any  mark  of  social  distinction." 

The  other  allusion  is  found  in  Ben  Jonson's  Epigram 
on  Poet- Ape,  Moxon's  Jonson,  p.  669.  Mr.  White's 
theory  is  that  manager  Shaksper  bought  plays  of  poor 
authors  exactly  as  his  contemporary,  manager  Hens- 
lowe,  did,  as  is  certainly  known;  also  employed  poor 
play- wrights  to  revise  and  re- write  old  plays,  as  Hens- 
lowe  did;  and  in  both  cases  passed  them  off  as  his  own, 


296  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

as  Henslowe  did  not.     Hence  the  appropriateness  of 
the  Poet- Ape: 

"Poor  Poet-Ape,  that  would  be  thought  our  chief, 
Whose  works  are  e'en  the  frippery  of  wit, 
From  brokage  is  become  so  bold  a  thief 
As  we,  the  robbed,  leave  rage,  and  pity  it. 
At  first  he  made  low  shifts,  would  pick  and  glean, 
Buy  the  reversion  of  old  plays;  now  grown 
To  a  little  wealth,  and  credit  in  the  scene, 
He  takes  up  all,  makes  each  man's  wit  his  own; 
And,  told  of  this,  he  slights  it.     Tut,  such  crimes 
The  sluggish  gaping  auditor  devours; 
He  marks  not  whose  't  was  first:  and  after-times 
May  judge  it  to  be  his,  as  well  as  ours. 
Fool!     As  if  half  eyes  will  not  know  a  fleece, 
From  locks  of  wool,  or  from  the  whole  piece." 

Both  Mr.  T.  W.  White  and  Mr.  Edwin  Reed  dis- 
cover evidences  of  the  existence  of  some  great  im- 
posture on  the  stage,  during  Shaksper's  career. 
''Our  age  doth  produce  many  such,  one  of  the  greatest 
being  a  stage-player,  a  man  with  sufficient  ingenuity 
for  imposition."  Confessio  Fraternitalis;  chap,  xii; 
anonymous,  circa  1615.  Jonson's  Poet- Ape: 

"Now  grown 

To  a  little  wealth  and  credit  in  the  scene, 
He  takes  up  all,  makes  each  man's  wit  his  own,"  etc. 

The  Return  from  Parnassus: 

'  'With  mouthing  words  that  better  wits  have  framed, 
They  purchase  lands,  and  now  esquires  are  made." 

RATSIE'S  GHOST. — "Thou  shalt  learn  to  be  frugal  ...  to 
feed  upon  all  men;  and  when  thou  feelest  thy  purse  well- 
lined,  buy  thee  some  place  in  the  country." 


REFERENCES  TO   SHAKESPEARE.  297 

Mr.  Alexanders.  Grosart,  in  ' 'Green  Pastures,  be- 
ing Choice  Extracts  from  the  works  of  Robert 
Greene",  lyondon,  1894,  says:  "We  are  so  used  to 
idolatrize  Shakespeare  .  .  .  that  we  shirk  in- 
quiring into  his  relations  with  his  precursors  and  con- 
temporaries. I,  for  one,  feel  satisfied  that  fuller 
knowledge  of  these  would  prove  that  for  years,  when 
feeling  his  way  upward,  Shakespeare  was  a  very  buc- 
caneer in  spoiling  the  Egyptians,  or  metaphorically  in 
turning  to  his  own  account  the  manuscript  writings  of 
unfortunate  contemporaries  who  were  constrained  to 
write  for  the  theaters."  Mr.  Grosart,  by  the  way, 
believes  the  Stratford  man  was  the  real  William 
Shakespeare,  and  his  opinion  of  him  is  scarcely  better 
than  Jonson's  of  the  poet-ape. 

Judge  Stotsenburg,  (Ind.  News,  yth  Apr.,  1897) 
makes  the  point  that  as  William  Shaksper  could  not 
write,  he  could  not  have  been  the  Ape  referred  to. 
There  seems  to  me  nothing  in  Jonson's  lines  that 
necessarily  implies  the  ability  in  the  Ape  to  personally 
write  anything.  It  is  apparently  enough  that  he 
could  get  his  writing  done  by  other  men,  who  "could 
pick  and  glean"  or  that  he  could  "buy  the  reversion  of 
old  plays' ' .  In  one  way  or  another  the  Ape  got  plays 
out  of  other  men,  and  passed  them  off  for  his  own; 
this  was  the  gist  of  his  offense. 

Greene  had  written  of  "Fair  Em",  an  anonymous 
production  attributed  to  Shakespeare:  "The  ass  is 
made  proud  by  this  underhand  brokery.  And  he  that 
cannot  write  true  English  without  the  help  of  clerks 
of  parish  churches,  will  needs  make  himself  the  father 
of  interludes. ' ' 


298  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

After  1623,  it  would  seem  natural  that  the  name 
of  "William  Shakespeare",  as  the  author  of  the 
Folio,  should  be  oftener  in  men's  thoughts  than  it  had 
before  been,  but,  on  examining  Ingleby  for  references 
between  1623  and  1632,  it  is  clear  that  it  is  not  so. 
In  the  nine  years  there  are  but  seventeen  mentions  of 
man  or  works.  During  the  same  period,  I  find  in 
Furnivall  no  mention  of  the  man,  and  but  seven,  all 
trivial,  of  the  works. 

In  illustration:  Sir  Herbert's  Office  Book,  Ing.,  p. 
157,  mentions  two  of  the  plays  as  having  been  per- 
formed at  Whitehall  in  1623  and  1624.  In  1627,  he 
enters  the  sum  of  ^5  as  having  been  received  from 
Mr.  Heminge  in  the  company's  name,  for  forbidding 
the  playing  of  "Shakespeare's  plays,"  to  the  Red  Bull 
Company.  What  plays  they  were  is  not  stated,  but 
the  Globe  Company  appears  to  have  had  rights  in 
some  of  the  Shakespeare  plays.  As  I  have  noted  else- 
where (Chap.  XIII),  it  is  a  curious  fact,  that  in  all 
this  literature,  no  single  play  is  identified  as  Shake- 
speare's, as  in  this  Office  Book,  we  read  of  Shake- 
speare plays,  but  never  of  a  play,  as  Shakespeare's 
Hamlet,  Twelfth  Night,  etc. 

P.  159,  1524,  says  of  a  certain  sort  of  people  that 
they  are  "like  Hamlet's  Ghost." 

P.  1 60,  1624,  also  speaks  of  Hamlet's  Ghost,  and, 
by  'name  only,  of  Pyramus  and  Thisbe. 

P.  161,  1624,  speaks  of  Venus  and  Adonis,  and  also 
of  Benedick  and  Beatrice. 

P.  164,  1625,  "A  young  Gentle  Lady,  having  read 
the  works  of  Shakespeare"  (the  Folio)  "made  me  this 
question' ' — about  Falstaff  and  Sir  John  Oldcastle, 


REFERENCES   TO   SHAKESPEARE.  299 

P.  1 86,  Dray  ton,  1627: 

"Shakespeare,  thou  hast  as  smooth  a  comic  vein 
Fitting  the  sock  and  in  thy  natural  brain 
As  strong  conception,  and  as  clear  a  rage 
As  any  one  that  trafficked  with  the  stage." 

Referring  to  the  author  of  the  plays,  whoever  he 
was. 

Cowley,  1628:  p.  170: 

.     .     .     "may  be 
By  his  Father  in  his  study  took 
At  Shakespeare's  plays",  etc. 

One  of  the  few  mentions  of  the  Folio. 

P.  172,  B.  Jonson,   1629,  calls  Pericles  a  *  'mouldy 

tale": 

.     .     .     "and  stale 

As  the  Shrieves  crusts,  and  nasty  as  his  fish- 
Scraps  out  of  every  dish 

Thrown  forth  and  raked  into  the  common  tub, 
May  keep  up  the  Play-club: 
There,  sweepings  do  as  well 
As  the  best  ordered  meal, ' '  etc. 

Not  very  complimentary  to  the  author  of  that  play. 

P.  174,  same,  1630-1637,  as  to  Shakespeare's  never 
blotting  a  line — which  I  speak  of  in  the  next  chapter. 

P.  181,  1630,  Anon:  in  a  jest  book,  tells  of  an  odd 
epitaph  in  the  church- yard,  at  Stratford-on-Avon,  "a 
town  most  remarkable  for  the  birth  of  famous  William 
Shakespeare." 

P.  176,  John  Milton,  1630:  "An  Epitaph  on  the 
admirable  Dramaticke  Poet,  W.  Shakespeare." 


300  SHAKSPER   NOT 

"What  need  my  Shakespeare  for  his  honor'd  bones 
The  labor  of  an  Age,  in  piled  stones, 
Or  that  his  hallowed  Reliques  should  be  hid 
Under  a  starre-y  pointing  Pyramid? 
Dear  Sonne  of  Memory,  great  Heire  of  Fame 
What  needst  thou  such  dull  witness  to  thy  name  ? 
Thou  in  our  wonder  and  astonishment 
Hast  built  thyself  a  lasting  monument: 
For  whilst     .     .     . 

Thy  easie  numbers  flow,  and  that  each  heart, 
From  the  leaves  of  thy  unvalued  Booke 
Those  Delphicke  lines  with  deep  Impression  tooke, 
Then  thou  our  fancy  of  herselfe  bereaving 
Dost  make  us  marble  with  too  much  conceiving, 
And  so  Sepulchred  in  such  pomp  doth  lie 
That  Kings  for  such  a  Tombe  would  wish  to  die. ' ' 

"Milton's  meaning  is  this:  Every  heart  by  the  plas- 
tic power  of  fancy  takes  deep  impression  of  Shake- 
speare's lines.  Then,  by  deprivation  of  fancy,  we  are 
turned  to  marble,  and  we  thus  become  an  inscribed 
monument  to  Shakespeare."  Ingleby.  He  is  so  im- 
pressed on  reading  the  plays  in  the  Folio,  that  he 
thinks  the  dramatic  poet  W.  Shakespeare  needs  no 
piled  stones,  the  labor  of  an  age,  and  no  star-pointing 
pyramid.  It  is  the  old  thought — Exegimonumentum, 
etc.  All  cultivated  men  to-day  will  agree  with  Milton 
that  the  man  who  wrote  the  Shakespeare  plays  needs 
no  other  monument  to  keep  his  memory  alive.  Milton 
knew  nothing  of  player  Shaksper.  He  was  a  baby 
when  that  man  left  L,ondon  for  Stratford,  and  but 
seven  when  the  player  died.  But  he  knew  the  poet 
Shakespeare  from  the  Folio,  and  hence  his  Epitaph. 

In  I/ Allegro  (1632)  Milton  has  these  lines  : 


TO   SHAKESPEARE.  301 

"Then  to  the  well-trod  stage  anon 
If  Jonson's  learned  sock  be  on, 
Or  sweetest  Shakespeare,  Fancy's  child 
Warble  his  native  wood-notes  wild." 

On  this  Dr.  Morgan  says:  "We  take  this  to  mean 
that  the  poet,  when  in  his  I/ Allegro  mood,  will, 
among  other  delights,  go  to  the  theater  to  hear  a 
learned  play  of  Jonson's,  or  some  of  Shakespeare's 
sweet  wood-notes.  But  to  show  how  uncritical  the 
whole  passage  is,  we  have  only  to  ask  where  in  Shake- 
speare are  we  to  look  for  'native  wood-notes  wild'; 
such  wood-notes  as  are  sounded  are  not  wild,  but  most 
classically  timed  and  measured".  "No  poet  was  ever 
less  a  warbler  of  'wood-notes  wild'."  Walter  Savage 
L,andor. 

Milton  never  saw  a  play  acted  in  a  London  theater. 
"The  play-house  was  abhorred  by  the  Puritans,  and 
avoided  by  those  who  desired  the  character  of  serious- 
ness and  decency.  A  grave  lawyer  would  have  de- 
based his  dignity,  and  a  young  trader  would  have 
impaired  his  credit  by  appearing  in  these  mansions  of 
licentiousness."  Dr.  Johnson. 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  I,  118,  gives  the  L' Allegro 
quotation  as  a  proof  that  Shaksper  was  believed  to 
have  written  the  plays  by  inspiration:  "That  Shake- 
speare wrote  without  effort,  by  inspiration,  not  by  de- 
sign, was,  so  far  as  it  has  been  recorded,  the  unani- 
mous belief  of  his  contemporaries  and  immediate 
successors",  instancing  Milton's  line  above  given  as 
evidence  that  one  of  his  immediate  successors  thought 


302  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPKARK. 

the  manager  of  the  Globe  inspired.*  Whom  else  of 
all  Shaksper's  contemporaries,  Mr.  Phillipps  has  in 
view,  he  does  not  tell  us,  and  there  is  no  clue  to  their 
names  in  Ingleby  or  Furnivall.  I  fear  the  unanimous 
belief  of  both  contemporaries  and  successors  must  be 
restricted  to  the  single  successor,  John  Milton,  who  was 
no  contemporary,  and  the  man  who  could  say  so  little, 
while  meaning  so  much,  could  have  voiced  the  an- 
swers of  the  Delphian  Apollo. 

These,  and  four  notices  of  plays,  or  of  Venus  and 
Adonis,  are  all  the  mentions  up  to  the  issue  of  the  2nd 
Folio,  1632.  Of  the  seventeen,  two  are  of  plays 
acted,  by  title;  eight  refer  to  single  plays,  without 
title,  or  to  Venus  and  Adonis;  and  only  six  mention 
Shakespeare's  name.  That  William  Shakespeare, 
whether  the  name  be  applied  to  the  author  or  the 
player,  after  the  issue  of  the  ist  Folio,  should  be 
spoken  of  but  six  times  in  nine  years,  shows  that  the 
Folio  had  not  gained  much  ground,  and  that  there  was 
little  interest  in  either  plays  or  author.  The  Prefatory 
Address  and  eulogies  of  the  Folio  were  probably  be- 
ginning to  take  effect,  but  still,  up  to  1632,  not  a  soul 
testified  that  the  Shakespeare  plays  were  one  whit 
superior  to  those  of  Beaumont,  Jonson,  Daniel,  and  a 
score  of  others. 

It  must  be  constantly  borne  in  mind  that  no  edu- 
cated or  cultured  man  up  to  1623  knew  who  player 

*  Even  Richard  Grant  White  said:  "He  had  as  much  deliber- 
ate purpose  in  his  breathing  as  in  his  play- writing".  Studies  in 
Shakespeare,  209,  We  have  before  seen  that  Mr.  White  thinks 
the  plays  written  simply  to  fill  the  theater  and  the  man's 
pocket.  Truly  a  worthy  object  of  inspiration! 


REFERENCES  TO   SHAKESPEARE.  303 

Shaksper  was,  any  more  than  who  author  ''Shake- 
speare" was;  one  was  as  much  unknown  to  the  read- 
ing world  as  the  other.  The  Folio  claimed  that  the 
author  and  player  were  one,  and  nobody  seemed  to 
care  whether  they  were  or  not. 

Ingleby's  third  period  runs  from  1632  to  1642.  I 
might  go  on  and  analyze  his  references  for  this  ten 
years,  but  the  result  would  be  the  same  as  before. 
Shakespeare,  Beaumont  and  others  continue  to  be 
classed  together,  and  single  plays,  or  Venus  and 
Adonis,  are  now  and  then  mentioned.  One  author, 
Heywood,  p.  202,  apostrophizes  "mellifluous  Shake- 
speare' ' ,  etc. ,  meaning  player  Shaksper,  and  of  this  I 
have  spoken.  On  p.  209,  Sir  John  Suckling  says: 
"My  friend,  Mr.  William  Shakespeare,  makes  Henry 
Hotspur  quarrel",  etc.,  referring  to  the  Folio.  The 
expression  "my  friend"  could  have  no  reference  to 
the  player,  for  Stickling  was  but  a  child  when  the 
Player  died,  and  of  course,  had  no  acquaintance  with 
him. 

So  far  as  can  be  discovered,  up  to  1642,  the  reputa- 
tion of  the  plays,  twice  published  in  Folio,  had  not 
advanced  one  particle.  They  were  scarcely  ever  acted, 
and  people  were  forgetting  all  about  them.  Then 
came  the  Commonwealth,  when  play-acting  was  for- 
bidden by  law,  and  at  the  Restoration,  in  1660,  the 
Shakespeare  Plays  had  become  antiquated,  and  offended 
the  taste  of  the  new  generation  of  play-goers. 


304  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE). 

CHAPTER  XL 

THE  FIRST  FOLIO. 

To  return  to  the  First  Folio,  and  the  elegiac  verses 
prefixed  to  it,  signed  B.  J.  and  Ben  Jonson,  (Ing.  47). 
Jonson,  later  in  life,  in  his  published  works,  speaks  of 
player  Shaksper,  but  what  he  said  was  entirely  out  of 
accord  with  the  expressions  given  in  these  verses.  The 
latter  are  entitled: 

"To  the  memory  of  my  beloved,  the  author,  Mr. 
William  Shakespeare,  and  what  he  hath  left  us." 

"To  draw  no  envy,  Shakespeare,  on  thy  name 
Am  I  thus  ample  to  thy  books  and  fame; 
While  I  confess  thy  writings  to  be  such 
As  neither  man  nor  Muse  can  praise  too  much. 
'  Tis  true,  and  all  merfs  suffrage  " 

Evidently  this  last  clause  means  that  the  plays  of 
Shakespeare  are  beyond  praise,  and  this  was  the  gen- 
eral opinion  of  them  in  1623,  ("all  men's  suffrage"). 

"I  therefore  will  begin:     Soul  of  the  Age 
The  applause,  delight  and  wonder  of  our  stage: 
My  Shakespeare  rise:  I  will  not  lodge  thee  by 
Chaucer  or  Spenser,  or  bid  Beaumont  lie 
A  little  further  to  make  thee  a  room. 
Thou  art  a  monument  without  a  tomb, 
Thou  art  alive  still  while  thy  books  do  live 
And  we  have  wits  to  read  and  praise  to  give. 


THE   FIRST  FOLIO.  305 

For  though  thou  hadst  small  Latin  and  less  Greek, 

From  thence  to  honor  thee  I  would  not  seek 

For  names;  but  call  forth  thundering  JEschylus, 

Euripides  aud  Sophocles  to  us, 

Pacuvius,  Accius,  him  of  Cordova  dead, 

To  life  again  to  hear  thy  buskin  tread, 

And  shake  a  'stage;  or,  when  thy  socks  were  on 

Leave  thee  alone  for  the  comparison 

Of  all  that  insolent  Greece  or  haughty  Rome 

Sent  forth,  or  since  did  from  their  ashes  come. 

Triumph,  my  Britain,  thou  hast  one  to  show 

To  whom  all  scenes  of  Europe  homage  owe, 

He  was  not  for  an  age,  but  for  all  time. 

Nature  herself  was  proud  of  her  designs, 

And  joyed  to  wear  the  dressing  of  his  lines 

Which  were  so  richly  spun  and  woven  so  fit 

As,  since  she  will  vouchsafe  no  other  wit, 

The  merry  Greek,  tart  Aristophanes, 

Neat  Terence,  witty  Plautus,  now  not  please 

But  antiquated  and  deserted  lie 

As  if  they  were  not  of  Nature's  family. 

Yet  I  must  not  give  Nature  all;  thy  art 

My  gentle  Shakespeare,  must  enjoy  a  part; 

For  though  the  poet's  matter  nature  be, 

His  art  doth  give  the  fashion;  and  that  he 

U'/io  casts  to  write  a  living  life  must  sweat 

(Such  as  thine  are)  and  strike  the  second  heat 

Upon  the  Muse's  anvil;  turn  the  same 

(And  himself  with  it),  that  he  thinks  to  frame 

Or  for  the  laurel  he  may  gain  a  scorn, 

For  a  good  poet  Js  made,  as  well  as  born; 

And  such  wert  thou:     Look  how  the  father's  face 

Lives  in  his  issue,  even  so  the  race 

Of  Shakespeare's  mind  and  manners  brightly  shines 

/;/  his  well-turned  and  true-filed  lines 

In  each  of  which  he  seems  to  shake  a  lance 

As  brandished  at  the  eyes  of  Ignorance, 


306  SHAKSPER   NOf  SHAKKSPEARE. 

Sweet  Swan  of  Avon,  what  a  sight  it  were 
To  see  thee  on  our  waters  yet  appear! 

Shine  forth  thou  Star  of  Poets,  and  with  rage, 

Or  influence  chide  or  cheer  the  drooping  stage, 

Which,  since  thy  flight  from  hence,  hath  mourned  like  night 

And  despairs  day,  but  for  thy  volumes  light". 

Dr.  Ingleby  ponders  over  this  glowing  tribute,  and 
appropriating  it  to  Shaksper,  remarks:  "One  could 
wish  that  Ben  had  said  all  this  in  Shakespeare's" 
(Shaksper's)  "lifetime". 

It  is  certain  that  William  Shaksper  was  not  one  of 
Jonson's  beloved,  and  more,  that  during  a  considerable 
part  of  the  careers  of  these  men,  and  especially  the 
last  part,  they  were  at  variance.  Fleay,  31,  says: 
"No  intercourse  can  be  shown  between  Shakespeare 
and  Jonson  after  1603".  On  p.  81:  "It  is  to  be  hoped 
that  these  two  great  dramatists  were  not  at  open  en- 
mity during  the  latter  part  of  Shakespeare's  life,  but 
all  record  of  any  real  friendship  between  them  ends  in 
1603,  and  little  value  is  to  be  attributed  either  to  the 
vague  traditions  of  Jonson's  visiting  him  at  Stratford 
(1616)  or  to  the  abundant  praises  lavished  on  him  by 
Jonson  in  commendatory  verses  after  his  death, ' '  Jonson 
was  always  impecunious,  and  always  ready  to  under- 
take any  literary  job.  The  syndicate  of  printers  who 
published  the  Folio  (with  no  authority  from  the  rep- 
resentatives of  the  late  William  Shaksper,  ex-proprie- 
tor of  the  Globe  theater),  wanted  an  eulogistic  prefa- 
tory address  in  verse,  and  got  it. 

Who  wrote  the  Shakespeare  plays,  the  world  knows 
not  yet.  Scarcely  an  earnest  effort  has  been  made  to 


THE   FIRST   FOUO.  307 

ascertain  the  truth,  and  then  mainly  by  those  who  at- 
tribute the  authorship  to  Francis  Bacon.  The  vast 
majority  of  literary  men  have  been  content  hitherto 
to  accept  the  traditional  authorship  of  William  Shak- 
sper,  who  could  not  possibly  have  written  one  page  of 
manuscript.  But  many  distinguished  Shakespearean 
scholars  have  not  hesitated  to  assign  parts  of  several 
of  these  plays,  and  whole  plays,  to  another  author 
than  the  one  always  in  mind  when  the  name  '  'Shake- 
speare' '  is  spoken,  that  is,  the  man  who  wrote  Ham- 
let. Thus  Fleay,  280,  says:  "That  the  play  of  Titus 
Andronicus  is  not  by  Shakespeare  is  pretty  certain 
from  internal  evidence."  He  thinks  "the  opinion 
that  Kyd  wrote  the  play  worth  the  examination,  al- 
though with  such  evidence  as  has  as  yet  been  ad- 
duced, Marlowe  has  certainly  the  better  claim. ' ' 

On  p.  257,  he  expresses  the  opinion  that  Henry 
VIII  is  chiefly  by  Fletcher  and  Massinger;  on  255, 
that  i  Henry  VI  was  written  by  Peele,  Marlowe  and 
others;  on  209,  that  2d  Henry  VI  was  by  Marlowe, 
Greene,  Kyd  and  Peele;  and  3d  Henry  VI  was  by 
Marlowe;  on  278,  that  Richard  III  was  by  Marlowe, 
but  left  incomplete  at  his  death;  on  242,  that  Timon  of 
Athens  unquestionably  contains  much  matter  by  other 
hands;  on  233,  that  Macbeth  contains  one  scene,  n, 
5,  which  is  not  by  Shakespeare;  on  224,  that  very  lit- 
tle of  the  Shrew  is  Shakespeare's.  Mr.  Fleay  consid- 
ers the  name  "Shakespeare"  as  that  of  an  indi- 
vidual, yet,  as  appears,  holds  that  a  considerable  por- 
tion of  the  plays  attributed  to  him  in  the  Folio,  and 
warranted  by  Heminge  and  Condell  to  be  the  work  of 


308  -SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

their  fellow,  William  Shaksper,  of  Stratford,  was  the 
work  of  several  other  authors. 

Professor  Wendell  in  these  matters  generally  agrees 
with  Fleay;  on  p.  345,  he  says:  "In  both  Timon  and 
Pericles  there  is  much  matter  believed  not  to  be  by 
Shakspere.  .  .  .  Just  what  part  he  had  in  these 
plays — whether  he  planned,  or  retouched,  or  collabo- 
rated— nobody  can  determine. ' ' 

Judge  Stotsenburg,  Ind.  News,  26  May,  1897,  ad- 
vance sheets  of  his  book,  "Howl  sought  and  found 
Shakespeare",  has  discussed  at  length  the  play  of 
Titus  Andronicus,  and  his  conclusion  is  that,  "Upon 
a  thorough  and  full  examination  of  the  play,  tested  by 
the  index  words  and  phrases,  I  am  of.  the  opinion  that 
Marlowe  was  the  author. ' '  And  he  adds  that  Samuel 
Johnson,  Hallam,  Verplanck,  Malone,  Steevens,  Bos- 
well,  Seymour  and  other  critics  and  commentators 
were  fully  agreed  that  this  play  was  not  written  by 
Shakespeare. 

Now  there  are  many  Shakespearean  students  who 
hold  "Shakespeare"  to  have  been  a  collective  name, 
standing  for  the  work  of  a  band,  or  society,  or  club  of 
authors  of  the  later  Elizabethan  period,  who  wrote 
singly  or  in  collaboration,  every  man  of  them  from 
the  Universities.  This  accounts  for  the-  unexplained 
(on  the  single  author  theory)  marked  differences  in 
style,  words,  phrases;  for  the  vast  vocabulary,  prepos- 
terous, if  attributed  to  one  individual,  to  the  pro- 
ficiency in  every  department  of  knowledge,  law,  med- 
icine, philosophy,  and  the  rest;  to  the  amalgamation 
and  consubstantiation  of  the  Latin  and  Greek  lan- 
guages with  the  native  thought  of  the  writers,  etc. 


THE  FIRST   FOLIO.  309 

From  this  point  of  view,  the  inclusion  of  Titus,  the 
three  Henry  VI,  Richard  III,  Henry  VIII,  Timon, 
and  Pericles,  The  Taming  of  a  Shrew,  is  understand- 
able; from  the  other  point  of  view,  it  is  not;  from 
this  point  of  view,  the  work  of  Marlowe  had  as  much 
right  to  be  in  the  Folio,  as  the  work  of  the  author  of 
Hamlet. 

Judge  Stotsenburg  is  on  the  path;  for  it  is  only  by 
minute  analysis  of  the  several  plays,  and  by  compari- 
son with  the  recognized  works  of  different  play-wrights 
of  that  period,  that  the  real  authors  of  any  particular 
Shakespeare  play  can  be  discovered.  Once  eliminate 
the  Stratford  clown,  and  before  long  it  will  be  known 
who  did  write  these  plays.* 

It  is  fair  to  presume  that  one  of  the  authors,  at 
least,  was  living  in  1623,  he  who  wrote  Othello.  Who 
but  one  of  the  band  could  have  identified  the  true 
plays,  out  of  the  many  which  during  thirty  years  had 
gone  by  the  name  of  Shakespeare?  And  who  else 

Mr.  T.  W.  White,  author  of  "Our  English  Homer",  Lon- 
don, 1892,  is  a  believer  in  the  collective  authorship,  and  places 
the  plays  as  follows: 

Love's  Labour 's  Lost  to  Robert  Greene. 

Comedy  of  Errors,  same. 

Winter's  Tale,  to  Robert  Greene,  and  Thomas  Nash. 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  Geo.  Peele,  and  Michael  Drayton. 

Richard  III,  to  Christopher  Marlowe. 

Henry  VI,  2  and  3,  to  Christopher  Marlowe. 

Hamlet,  to  Francis  Bacon. 

Romeo  and  Juliet,  to  Samuel  Daniel. 

As  You  Like  It,  to  Thomas  Lodge. 

Taming  of  the  Shrew,  Samuel  Daniel,  or  Michael  Drayton. 

Richard  II,  to  same. 


310  SHAKSPltR   NOT 

could  have  pronounced  on  the  spurious  plays?  A 
generation  had  passed  since  these  plays  had  begun  to 
appear,  and  no  living  man,  except  one  of  the  authors, 
could  have  known  what  was  written.  Who  but  one  of 
the  band,  could  have  handed  to  the  publishers  nine 
plays  which  no  one  but  himself  or  associates  had  ever 
seen  or  heard  of;  or  could  have  got  ready  for  printing, 
in  1623,  as  many  other  plays,  re- written,  revised,  ex- 
tended, which  had  been  acted  years  before  in  some 
abbreviated  form,  but  never  printed. 

The  plays  first  printed  in  the  Folio  were:  Two  Gen- 
tlemen of  Verona,  ist  Henry  VI,  All's  Well  That 
Ends  Well,  Comedy  of  Errors,  As  You  Like  It, 
Twelfth  Night,  Measure  for  Measure,  King  John, 
Cymbeline,  The  Winter's  Tale,  Henry  VIII,  Macbeth, 
The  Tempest,  Coriolanus,  Julius  Caesar,  and  Antony 
and  Cleopatra. 

Dowden  says,  p.  134:  "The  Folio  is  the  sole  author- 
ity for  seventeen  plays".  Halliwell-Phillipps  says,  I, 
290:  "Out  of  the  thirty-six  dramas  which  they 
(Heminge  and  Condell)  collected,  one-half  had  never 
been  printed  in  any  shape' ' .  The  play  of  Othello 
had  been  published  in  Quarto  the  year  before  (1622), 
entered  in  the  Stationer's  Register,  in  1621;  but  when 
the  Folio  issued,  behold  Othello  enlarged,  revised  and 
divided  into  acts  and  scenes  (which  had  not  been  done 
in  the  Quarto!)  Knight  says  of  this  play:  ' 'On  the  6th 
of  Oct.,  1621,  Thomas  Walker  entered  at  Stationer's 
Hall  'The  Tragedie  of  Othello,  the  More  of  Venice'. 
In  1622,  Walker  published  the  edition  for  which  he 
had  thus  claimed  the  copyright.  It  is  a  small  Quarto. 
.  .  .  The  Folio  edition,  162 3, 'is  regularly  divided 


THE   FIRST  FOLIO.  31! 

into  acts  and  scenes;  the  Quarto  edition  lias  not  a 
single  indication  of  an)'  subdivision  in  the  acts,  and 
omits  the  division  between  Acts  2  and  3.  The  Folio 
edition  contains  163  lines,  which  are  not  found  in  the 
Quarto,  and  these  are  some  of  the  most  striking  in  the 
play.  The  number  of  lines  found  in  the  Quarto, 
which  are  not  in  the  Folio,  do  not  amount  to  ten." 
Knight's  Shakespeare,  Othello. 

Ruggles  says,  579:  "The  ground-work  of  Othello  is 
found  in  Cinthio's  novel  of  'The  Moorish  Captain',  of 
which  no  translation  into  English  is  known  earlier 
than  of  Parr,  in  1795.  The  poet,  no  doubt,  took  the 
story  from  the  original  Italian",  etc.  Then  that  poet 
was  not  William  Shaksper,  and  from  the  facts  above 
stated,  it  is  plain  that  the  poet  was  living  in  1622-3! 

"Few  of  us  dream  how  vast  were  the  emendations 
and  revisions,  enlargements  and  corrections,  of  the 
old  Shakespearean  plays  given  to  the  world  in  this 
Folio  of  1623.  Mr.  R.  G.  White  says,  that  in 
Love's  Labour's  Lost,  there  are  inserted  new  lines  in 
almost  every  speech.  Another,  the  Merry  Wives  of 
Windsor,  according  to  Knight,  has  doubled  the  num- 
ber of  lines  it  originally  possessed  in  1600.  The 
Henry  V  has  1900  new  lines.  The  Titus  Androni- 
cus  has  an  entire  new  scene;  and  Much  Ado  About 
Nothing,  and  Lear,  are  so  alterated  and  elabo- 
rated, with  curtailments  here  and  enlargements  there 
as  to  lead  Mr.  Knight  to  declare  that  none  but  the 
hand  of  the  master  could  have  super-added  them". 
Morgan,  234. 

Yet,  in  1623,  player  Shaksper  had  been  dead  seven 
years,  and  according  to  Phillipps,  the  facts  lead  ir- 


312  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

resistibly  to  the  conclusion  that  the  poet  (Shaksper) 
abandoned  literary  occupation  a  considerable  period 
before  his  decease,  and  in  all  probability  when  he  dis- 
posed of  his  theatrical  property.  This  disposal  took 
place  in  1610-11.  Therefore,  if  he  wrote  the  plays, 
in  addition  to  the  labor  so  involved,  he  was  spending 
the  busiest  years  of  his  life,  when  he  was  strolling 
through  the  land,  or  living  in  L,ondon  as  player, 
manager,  and  theater  proprietor,  his  whole  soul  ab- 
sorbed in  money-making,  in  the  unremunerative  work 
of  first  writing  the  original  plays,  then  enlarging  and 
revising  them  with  a  view  to  "their  literary  perfec- 
tion", as  Swinburne  says;  and  finally,  in  writing  a 
long  series  of  grand  new  plays,  that  were  not  to  see 
the  light  for  years  to  come,  and  which  he  did  not  in- 
tend to  have  played  in  his  own  or  any  theater,  but  to 
have  printed  for  a  very  different  public  than  he  had 
ever  catered  to  in  his  life-time.  All  this  labor  had  to 
be  done  before  the  end  of  1610,  and  the  plays  deposited 
somewhere,  so  that  when  a  posthumous  edition  of  his 
works  should  come  to  be  published,  the  printers  would 
know  where  to  find  them  in  complete  order  for  print- 
ing. The  mere  statement  of  the  case  is  a  demonstra- 
tion of  its  impossibility.  And  where  in  the  scheme 
does  the  Othello  come — printed  in  Quarto  in  1622, 
taken  in  hand  by  somebody,  greatly  enlarged  and  re- 
vised, divided  into  Acts  snd  Scenes,  and  published  in 
the  Folio,  1623. 

Who  was  living  in  1622-23,  who  could  do  that 
work  ?  Whoever  he  was,  he  had  it  in  him  to  write 
the  best  of  the  Shakespeare  plays. 

The  spurious  plays  are  called  by  Symonds  "Doubt- 


THE   FIRST   FOUO.  313 

ful  Plays",  and  he  devotes  Chapter  10  to  their  con- 
sideration. He  starts  with  this  bold  assumption,  "We 
know  that  before  Shakspere  (meaning  Stratford  Shak- 
sper)  began  his  great  series  of  authentic  and  undis- 
puted dramas,  he  spent  some  years  of  strenuous  ac- 
tivity as  a  journeymen  for  the  company  of  players  he 
had  joined."  Which  was  just  after  he  had  put  off 
his  butcher's  apron,  and  had  fled  with  his  patois  to 
London. 

Now  it  happens  that  "we"  do  not  know  anything 
of  the  sort  alleged  by  Mr.  Symonds;  we  assume  it, 
for  the  reason  that  in  order  to  father  the  Shakespeare 
plays  on  this  man,  we  have  to  get  him  at  work — 
strenuous  work — as  soon  as  he  reaches  L,ondon.  As 
to  the  proof  of  Mr.  Symonds'  assertion,  there  is  none 
whatever — it  comes  from  what  Mr.  Fleay  calls  '  (a  mis- 
chievously fertile  imagination. ' '  Mr.  Symonds  is  puz- 
zled with  the  Doubtful  Plays.  They  are  all  in  some 
respects  after  the  style  of  the  author  of  the  received 
Shakespeare  plays,  and  all  in  some  respects  are  in  the 
style  of  various  other  authors.  Mr.  Symonds  thinks 
that  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  may  have 
had  a  hand  in  them,  either  as  a  restorer,  or  as  a  col- 
laborator, or  that  they  have  been  trial  essays  in  some 
other  veins  of  work  abandoned  by  him.  In  this  last 
case  they  would  be  genuine  Shakespeare  plays.  Had 
no  collection  of  the  plays  been  made  in  1623,  it  would 
have  been  impossible  for  the  critics  of  the  igth  cen- 
tury to  form  a  list  of  the  Shakespeare  plays.  Some 
of  the  now  received  plays  would  have  been  struck  out, 
and  some  of  the  doubtful  plays  have  taken  their  places. 
The  remarkable  thing  is  that,  in  1623,  some  one 


314  SHAKSPER   NOT 

should  have  been  at  hand  to  point  out  unerringly  what 
were  the  true  Shakespeare  plays — several  of  them  dating 
back  thirty  years,  and  nearly  all  of  them  over  twenty, 
and  should  have  rejected  every  one  of  the  plays  which 
puzzled  Mr.  Symonds.  It  is  not  to  be  believed  that  the 
fellow-players  of  William  Shaksper,  underlings  at  the 
Globe,  butchers,  and  bakers,  and  candlestick-makers, 
and  ranking  with  buffoons  and  tumblers,  would  know 
anything  of  the  matter.  The  decision  as  to  which 
plays  were  genuine  and  which  spurious  was  that  of 
some  man  who  knew  all  about  it — the  same  man  who 
handed  to  the  printers  sixteen  or  seventeen  plays,  as 
"Shakespeare's",  which  had  never  before  been  pub- 
lished, half  the  number  entirely  new.  Taken  in  con- 
nection with  the  fact  of  the  Othello,  this  man  could 
only  have  been  the  author  of  more  or  less  of  the 
Shakespeare  plays,  and  he  was  living  in  1623. 

When  the  Folio  volume,  to  embrace  about  two  score 
plays,  old  and  new,  the  former  of  which  had  been 
printed  in  Quarto  twenty  to  thirty  years  before,  was 
planned,  these  old  plays  had  been  almost,  and  many 
of  them  quite,  forgotten.  Between  1616,  when  Shak- 
sper died,  and  1623,  there  is  no  mention  of  any  of 
them  in  Ingleby;  and  between  1591,  when  Ingleby's 
Centurie  begins,  and  1616,  half  6f  them  had  been 
mentioned  but  once  or  twice  in  all  literature.  Several 
of  the  plays  had  been  printed  under  names  of  William 
Shakespeare,  or  Shake-speare,  or  Shakespere,  but  who 
the  man  was  who  was  thus  concealed,  no  one  knew. 
A  generation  had  passed  since  the  name  first  appeared 
(in  1593)  upon  the  title  page  of  a  poem.  Five  years 
later  it  had  been  put  tentatively  upon  the  new  edition 


THE   FIRST   FOUO.  315 

of  an  old  play,  and  finally  came  to  be  used  upon  new 
plays  by  different  authors  or  on  new  editions  of  old 
plays.  Thus  Love's  Labour's  Lost  (Greene?),  1598, 
"By  William  Shakspere";  Richard  III  (Marlowe), 
1598,  "By  William  Shake-speare";  Sir  John  Oldcastle 
(unknown),  1600,  "Written  by  William  Shakespeare" ; 
A  Yorkshire  Tragedy  (unknown),  1608,  "Written  by 
William  Shakespeare";  Edward  III,  (Marlowe),  1600; 
The  London  Prodigal,  (unknown)  1605 — both  by 
'  'William  Shakespeare' ' ,  etc. ,  etc. 

Certain  of  these  plays  it  was  now  proposed  to  pub- 
lish, together  with  others  which  had  been  obtained 
from  an  unknown  source,  brand  new  plays,  or  elab- 
orate revisions  of  the  old  ones.  The  whole  business 
wras  left  unexplained  in  1623,  and  the  ensuing  centu- 
ries have  brought  no  light.  We  may  suppose,  then, 
that  the  printers  wanted  a  figure-head,  some  one  to 
stand  sponsor  for  the  volume,  and  they  found  a  man 
whose  name  came  handy  for  the  purpose,  and  who  was 
unknown  to  any  of  the  literary  men  of  that  age,  how- 
ever well  he  had  been  known  to  the  rabble,  one  Will- 
iam Shaksper,  who  had  made  a  fortune  by  running 
the  Globe  theater,  and  years  ago  had  retired  to  Strdt- 
ford-on-Avon,  whence  he  came.  One  thing  was  cer- 
tain, that  if  no  one  could  say  that  he  had  written 
them,  on  the  other  hand,  no  one  could  say  that  he 
had  not.  Thanks  to  Dr.  Ingleby  and  Halliwell-Phil- 
lipps,  we,  in  1900,  know  a  hundred  times  more  of  this 
Shaksper  than  any  reading  man  in  England  could 
have  known  in  1623.  So  he  was  adopted,  and,  by 
every  means  in  their  power,  the  printers  aimed  to  im- 
press upon  the  public  that  here  was  the  original 


316  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPKARE. 

Jacobs — the  Shakespeare  of  the  Venus  and  Adonis, 
and  the  Shakespeare  of  the  plays.  Ben  Jonson's 
facile  pen  was  employed  to  write  a  Dedication  and  Ad- 
dress to  the  readers  over  the  names  of  two  players, 
who,  years  ago,  had  been  fellows  of  this  Shaksper, 
and  some  eulogistic  lines  above  his  own  initials.  Sev- 
eral penny-a-liners  were  also  invited  to  contribute  their 
rhyming  encomiums.  It  is  conceivable  that  survivors 
of  the  band  of  authors  who  had  written  between  1593 
and  1608  under  the  common  soubriquet  of  "William 
Shakespeare",  who  were  living  in  1623,  were  not  un- 
willing to  assist  in  the  publication,  though  still  con- 
cealing their  authorship,  for  the  odium  attached  to  play- 
writiug  was  as  great  in  1623  as  it  had  been  a  score  of 
years  before.  But  if  this  were  so,  they  overlooked 
the  fact  that 

"The  sluggish  gaping  auditor     .     .     . 
Marks  not  whose  't  was  first,  and  after  times 
May  judge  it  to  be  his." 

Or  perhaps  they  trusted  to  the  assurance  expressed 
in  the  remainder  of  these  lines  : 

"Fool,  as  if  half  eyes  will  not  know  a  fleece 
From  locks  of  wool,  or  shreds  from  the  whole  piece." 

Doubtless  it  was  a  matter  of  indifference  to  them 
that  Jonson  should  be  called  on  by  the  printers  for 
lines  to  introduce  the  cut  of  the  supposititious  author 
which  prefaces  the  Folio.  Whether  that  was  a  like- 
ness of  William  Shaksper,  or  a  caricature,  no  one  can 
now  tell.  If  the  Stratford  bust  resembled  the  man, 
the  Folio  head  did  not.  One  or  the  other  was  a  fraud. 


THE   FIRST   FOI4O.  317 

They  represented  two  individuals,  without  one  feature 
in  common.  But  as  by  general  consent  the  Shak- 
spereans  have  to-day  fixed  on  the  Folio  head  as  a  gen- 
uine likeness,  even  going  so  far  as  to  have  a  bust  in 
imitation  of  it  carved  for  the  Congressional  Library, 
outsiders  may  accept  it  for  what  it  pretends  to  be. 
In  a  gallery  of  showmen  this  figure  might  hold  its 
own;  in  a  gallery  of  poets  it  is  painfully  out  of  place. 
Shaksper's  ability  as  a  manager  of  a  public  theater, 
and  as  a  money-maker,  was  considerable,  but  by  a  few 
ironical  lines  of  a  genuine  poet  he  was  transformed 
into  the  greatest  of  poets,  and  the  showman  and 
money-making  phases  are  quite  forgotten.  Jonson 
had  known  the  man  well,  and  it  must  have  been  with 
peculiar  delight  that  he  undertook  the  job.  So  he 
begins: 

"This  figure  that  thou  here  seest  put, 
It  was  for  gentle  Shakespeare  cut, 
Wherein  the  graver  had  a  strife 
With  nature  to  outdo  the  life: 
O,  could  he  but  have  drawn  his  Wit 
As  well  in  brass  as  he  hath  hit 
His  face,  the  Print  would  then  surpass 
All  that  was  ever  wrote  in  Brass. ' ' 

This  play  upon  the  word  "Brass"  can  have  but  one 
meaning,  namely,  to  intimate  that  the  impudent  as- 
sumption that  these  plays  were  written  by  the  man 
whose  head  is  here  given,  is  brazen,  and  Jonson  ac- 
cordingly appended  these  lines  of  advice  to  the  Reader: 

"But  since  he  cannot,  Reader  look 
Not  at  his  Picture,  but  his  Book," 


31 8  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

As  clear  a  hint  as  could  be  given,  that  all  pretense 
that  the  writer  of  these  plays  was  that  sort  of  man 
was  foolery.  The  word  '  'gentle' '  we  may  understand 
to  be  aimed  at  Shaksper's  abortive  attempt  at  coat- 
armour,  in  order  to  make  himself  a  titular  gentleman. 

Mr.  John  Corbin  says  on  these  lines:  "They  have 
usually  been  taken  as  high  praise  of  the  print;  but 
the  fact  that  commendatory  verses  were  one  of  the 
commonest  literary  customs  of  the  time,  distinctly 
lessens  their  value.  The  phrasing  of  the  second 
couplet,  moreover,  was  hackneyed  enough  in  the  time 
of  Klizabeth,  and  far  from  being  fulsome  of  praise,  is 
little  more  than  a  metrical  rendering  of  'This  is  a  por- 
trait of  Shakespeare'.  The  rest  of  the  poem  reduced  to 
common  parlance,  says,  that  since  the  graver  has 
failed  to  express  Shakespeare's  (Shaksper's)  soul  as 
well  as  he  has  drawn  his  features,  we  must  turn  to  the 
plays  to  find  the  real  author."  Harper's  Magazine, 
Apr.,  1897.  Mr.  Corbin  has  hit  it  exactly.  The  en- 
graver has  drawn  Shaksper's  features,  but  in  them  is 
nothing  of  the  soul  of  "Shakespeare".  To  find  the 
real  author,  Mr.  Corbin  well  says  "we  must  turn  to 
the  plays." 

Not  merely  were  commendatory  verses  prefixed  to 
a  book,  in  that  age,  but  figure-heads,  pseudo-like- 
nesses, or  caricatures  of  the  author  were  customary 
also. 

"Deceptive  and  vaunting  title-pages  were  practiced 
to  such  excess  that  Tom  Nash,  an  'Author  by  Pro- 
fession', never  fastidiously  modest,  blushed  at  the  title 
of  his  'Pierce  Pennilesse',  which  the  publishers  had 
flourished  in  the  first  edition,  like  'a  tedious  mounte- 


THE   FIRST   FOUO.  319 

bank'.  The  booksellers  forged  great  names  to  recom- 
mend their  works.  'It  was  an  usual  thing  in  those 
days,'  says  honest  Anthony  Wood,  'to  set  a  great 
name  to  a  book,  by  the  sharking  booksellers  or 
snivelling  writers,  to  get  bread'  ".  Disraeli,  Calamities 
of  Authors. 

(I  cut  from  N.  Y.  Tribune  of  10  Feby.,  1899,  this 
slip:  "Among  the  Hard wicke  papers,  to  be  sold  within 
a  few  days,  is  a  letter  in  which  Dean  Percy  writes  in 
1781"  (150  years  after  the  First  Folio  of  the  Shake- 
speare plays  appeared)  "In  the  book-making  art  the 
celebrity  of  name  is  of  so  much  consequence  that  it 
is  not  unusual  for  the  Trade  to  hire  a  popular  name  to 
be  prefixed  to  a  work  which  the  owner  of  that  name 
never  saw.  Poor  Goldsmith  picked  up  many  a 
Guinea  by  this  kind  of  Traffic,  and  we  have  accord- 
ingly a  Grecian  History,  a  version  of  Scarron,  and 
many  other  things,  which,  to  the  best  of  my  belief,  he 
was  utterly  unconcerned  in.") 

Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  published  shortly 
before  this  Folio,  (1621),  has  in  its  front  a  pseudo- 
likeness  of  Democritus  Junior,  the  pretended  author. 
The  Preface  begins  thus: — 

"Gentle  reader,  I  presume  you  will  be  inquisitive  to 
know  what  antic  or  personate  actor  this  is,  that  so  in- 
solently intrudes  upon  this  common  theater,  to  the 
world's  view,  arrogating  another  man's  name;  whence 
he  is,  why  he  doth  it,  and  what  he  hath  to  say  .  . 
.  I  would  not  willingly  be  known.  .  .  .  'T is  for 
no  such  respect  I  shroud  myself  under  his  name;  but 
in  an  unknown  habit  to  assume  a  little  more  liberty 
and  freedom  of  speech," 


320  SHAKSPER   NOT    SHAKESPEARE. 

As  to  the  figure-head,  he  says:  "It  is  a  kind  of  pol- 
icy in  these  days,  to  prefix  a  fantastical  title  (cut)  to 
a  book  which  is  to  be  sold;  for,  as  larks  come  down  to 
a  day-net,  many  vain  readers  will  tarry  and  stand  gaz- 
ing like  silly  passengers  at  an  antic  picture  in  a  paint- 
er's shop,  that  will  not  look  at  a  judicious  piece." 
Accompanying  the  figure-head  are  these  lines: 

''Now  last  of  all,  to  fill  a  space 
Presented  is  the  author's  face. 
His  mind  no  one  can  well  express, 
That  by  his  writing  you  may  guess. 
It  is  not  pride     .     .     . 
Made  him  do  this,  if  you  must  know 
The  Printer  would  need  have  it  so." 

The  writers  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  concealed 
their  personality  in  order  "to  assume  a  little  more  lib- 
erty and  freedom  of  speech' ' .  When  it  came  to  pub- 
lishing the  collected  plays  in  the  Folio,  the  printers 
would  need  have  some  sort  of  figure-head  to  represent 
the  author  "Shakespeare",  and,  as  we  have  seen, 
Jonson  was  employed  to  write  lines  introducing  it. 
Also  he  was  employed  to  write  a  rhyming  Preface. 
Never  in  the  history  of  literature  was  such  another 
preface  written.  Consider  that  up  to  1616,  and  while 
the  player  Shaksper  was  alive,  and  the  plays  were 
issuing,  and  from  1616  to  1623,  when  the  Folio  was 
published,  not  one  single  contemporary  showed  by  his 
mention  of  the  plays  of  William  Shakespeare,  that 
he  held  them  to  be  anything  out  of  the  common,  or 
better  than  the  works  of  half  a  dozen  other  play- 
wrights nearly  always  enumerated  in  connection  with 


THE   FIRST   FOUO.  321 

Shakespeare.  Therefore,  Jonson's  rhyming  preface  be- 
gins with  what  was  so  manifestly  a  lie,  if  intended  to  be 
understood  literally,  that  it  is  evident  the  writer  meant 
exactly  the  reverse  of  what  his  words  say.  Your 
plays  are  beyond  praise,  everybody  is  talking  of  them, 
and  the  suffrage  of  all  men  is  that  never  was  there  any- 
thing like  it  in  literature.  Whereas  the  fact  wras  that 
nobody  talked  of  them,  not  a  soul  had  held  them  to 
be  superior  to  the  works  of  other  men,  up  to  1623. 
If,  in  1616,  they  had  dropped  out  of  existence,  no 
one  would  have  known  it,  or  missed  them.  Strange 
as  this  may  seem  to  the  nineteenth  century  worshipers 
of  Shakespeare,  the  fact  is  as  I  give  it,  and  the  Ingleby 
references  bear  me  out.  The  plays  were  not  written 
for  the  1 6th  century,  but  for  future  ages,  they  wrere 
over  the  heads  of  nearly  all  people  then  living,  and  it 
is  only  in  the  igth  century  that  they  have  come  to  be 
appreciated.  As  Dr.  Ingleby  declares  in  his  Preface: 
"We  are  at  length  slowly  rounding  to  a  just  estimate 
of  his  works. ' ' 

(I  have  before  quoted  Ingleby 's  remark  that  for  a 
full  hundred  years  from  the  first  appearance  of  a 
Shakespeare  play,  no  one  held  Shakespeare  to  be  sui 
gcnci  is) . 

Thus  Richard  Carew,  1595-6,  Ing.  20: — "The  Mira- 
cle of  our  age,  Sir  Philip  Sidney -."* 

Francis  Meres,  1598,  Ing.  21,  puts  together  Spenser, 
Daniel,  Drayton,  Warner,  Shakespeare,  Marlowe,  and 
Chapman. 

*  "As  a  series  of  sonnets,  the  Astrophel  and  Stella  are  second 
only  to  Shakespeare;  as  a  series  of  love-poems,  they  are  perhaps 
unsurpassed./  Craik,  Eng.  Lit. 


322  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKKSPKARE. 

Edmund  Bolton,  1610,  Ing.  91:  "But  among  the 
chief,  or  rather  the  chief  are  in  niy  opinion,  these, 
Shakespeare,  Beaumont,  and  innumerable  other  writers 
for  the  stage. ' ' 

John  Webster,  1612,  Ing.  100:  "For  mine  owne 
part,  I  have  ever  truly  cherished  my  good  opinion  of 
other  men's  worthy  Labours,  especially  of  that  full 
and  haightened  stile  of  maister  Chapman;  the  labor 'd 
and  understanding  works  of  maister  Johnson;  The 
no  less  worthy  composure  of  the  both  worthily  ex- 
cellent Maister  Beaumont  and  Maister  Fletcher;  And, 
lastly  (without  wrong  last  to  be  named),  the  right 
happy  and  copious  industry  of  M.  Shake-speare,  M. 
Decker  and  M.  Hey  wood." 

John  Webster,  according  to  Swinburne,  Enc.  Brit., 
was  "the  greatest  of  Shakespeare's  contemporaries 
.  a  tragic  poet  and  dramatist  of  the  very  fore- 
most rank  in  the  very  highest  class.  .  .  .  The 
Duchess  of  Malfy  stands  out  among  its  compeers  as 
one  of  the  imperishable  and  ineradicable  landmarks  of 
literature.  The  transcendent  imagination  and  the  im- 
passioned sympathy  which  inspire  this  most  tragic 
of  all  tragedies  save  King  Lear,  are  fused  together  in 
the  fourth  act  into  a  creation  which  has  hardly  been 
excelled  for  unflagging  energy  of  expression  and  of 
pathos  in  all  the  dramatic  or  poetic  literature  of  the 
world."  Webster's  plays  date  from  1601  to  1624. 
Will  it  be  believed  that  in  all  the  writings  of  this  great 
contemporary  of  "Shakespeare",  a  resident  of  London 
also,  the  mention  of  Shakespeare  above  given  is  the 
only  one,  and  that  there  is  nowhere  a  mention  or  an 
allusion  to  the  works  of  Shakespeare!  As  to  the 


THE   FIRST   FOIvIO.  323 

player,  there  is  absolute  silence,  as  was  to  be  expected. 
All  that  John  Webster  had  to  say  of  the  poet  was  that 
he  had  ever  cherished  a  good  opinion  of  his  right 
happy  and  copious  industry,  and  lumps  him  with  two 
second  rate  and  voluminous  writers,  Decker  and 
Hey  wood. 

William  Camden,  1608,  Ing.  59:  "If  I  should  come 
to  our  time,  what  a  world  could  I  present  you  out  of 
Sir  Philip  Sidney,  Ed.  Spenser,  Samuel  Daniel,  Hugh 
Holland,  Ben  Jonson,  Th.  Campion,  Mich.  Drayton, 
George  Chapman,  John  Marston,  William  Shakespeare, 
and  other  more  pregnant  wits  of  these  our  times  whom 
succeeding  ages  may  justly  admire."  Here  Shake- 
speare is  classed  with  several  poets,  the  names  of  some 
of  whom  are  now  known  only  to  the  antiquary,  and 
all  are  spoken  of  as  if  they  were  on  the  same  level; 
and  moreover  there  were  other  poets  "more  preg- 
nant than  those  enumerated. ' ' 
,In  1620,  John  Taylor  wrote  thus  (133): 

"Sir  Philip  Sidney,  who  the  laurel  wore* 
Spenser  and  Shakespeare  did  in  art  excel, 
Sir  Edward  Dyer,  Greene,  Nash,  Daniel, 
Silvester,  Beaumont,  Sir  John  Harrington, 
Forgetfulness  their  works  would  overrun 
But  that  in  paper  they  immortally 
Do  live,  in  spite  of  death,  and  cannot  die." 

"We  do  not  look  for  Shakespeare's  name  in  books 
and  poetry  which  were  issued  before  1593,  when  his 

*  Lee  says,  429:  "Sidney  enjoyed  in  the  decade  that  followed 
his  death  the  reputation  of  a  demi-god,  and  the  wide  dissemina- 
tion in  print  of  his  numerous  sonnets  in  1591  spurred  nearly 
every  living  poet  in  England  to  emulate  his  achievements." 


324  SHAKSPKR   NOT 

Venus  and  Adonis,  'the  first  heir  of  my  invention', 
was  issued;  so  that  we  are  not  surprised  at  the  silence 
of  Sir  William  Webb  (1586),  George  Puttenham 
(1589),  Sir  John  Harrington  (1591),  Sir  Philip  Sid- 
ney (I595)>  and  Lodge  (1596).  Shakespeare  could 
hardly  have  been  known  to  any  of  them.  But  the 
case  is  otherwise  with  works  of  the  same  character 
issued  as  late  as  1596,  the  year  in  which  were  pub- 
lished Thomas  Lodge's  Wits  Miserie,  and  the  World's 
Madness,  where  among  the  divine  wits,  we  do  not  find 
the  name  of  Shakespeare.  Similarly,  in  1598,  was 
published  Kdward  Guilpin's  collection  of  satires  called 
'Skialethea' ,  the  sixth  of  which  contains  the  names 
of  Chaucer,  Gower,  Daniel,  Markham,  Dray  ton  and 
Sidney,  but  not  that  of  Shakespeare.  Ben  Jonson, 
writing  some  forty  years  later,  makes  the  same  re- 
markable omission  in  one  part  of  his  'Discoveries';  he 
remarks  that  as  it  is  fit  to  read  the  best  authors  to 
youth  first,  so  let  them  be  of  the  openest  and  clearest; 
and  he  distinguishes  how  Sidney,  Donne,  Chaucer  and 
Spenser  should  be  read — but  does  not  mention  Shake- 
speare. Richard  Carew  assigns  the  first  place  to  Sid- 
ney; Davidson  and  a  host  of  others  set  an  extravagant 
value  on  Daniel.  The  elder  Basse,  Taylor,  and  Kd- 
ward Phillipps  seem  to  put  Spenser  and  Shakespeare 
on  an  equality."  Ingleby,  Preface. 

"It  is  singular,  if  we  rely  upon  several  coeval  au- 
thorities, how  little  our  great  dramatist  was,  about 
this  period,  known  and  admired  for  his  plays.  Rich- 
ard Barnfeild  published  his  'Encomion  of  Lady 
Pecunia',  in  1598,  (the  year  in  which  the  list  of  twelve 


THE   FIRST   FOLIO.  325 

of  Shakespeare's  plays  were  printed  by  Meres)    .    .    . 
and  we  quote  the  following  notice  of  Shakespeare: 

And  Shakespeare  them,  whose  honey-flowing  vein, 
Pleasing  the  world,  thy  praises  doth  contain, 
Whose  Venus  and  whose  Lucrece,  sweet  and  chaste, 
Thy  name  in  Fame's  immortal  book  hath  placed. 

Here  Shakespeare's  popularity  as  pleasing  the  world 
is  noticed,  but  the  proofs  of  it  are  not  derived  from 
the  stage,  etc.  .  .  . 

Precisely  to  the  same  effect,  but  a  still  stronger  in- 
stance, we  may  refer  to  a  play  in  which  both  Burbage 
and  Kempe  are  introduced  as  characters,  the  one  of 
whom  had  obtained  such  celebrity  in  the  tragic,  and 
the  other  in  the  comic  parts  of  Shakespeare's  dramas; 
we  allude  to  the  Return  from  Parnassus,  which  was  in- 
disputably acted  before  the  death  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 
In  a  scene  where  two  young  students  are  discussing 
the  merits  of  particular  poets,  one  of  them  thus  speaks 
of  Shakespeare: 

"Who  loves  Adonis'  love  or  Lucrece  rape 
His  sweeter  verse  contains  heart-robbing  life,"  etc. 

Not  the  most  distant  allusion  is  made  to  any  of  his 
dramatic  productions.  .  .  .  Hence  we  might  be 
led  to  imagine,  that,  even  down  to  as  late  a  period  as 
the  commencement  of  the  iyth  century,  the  reputa- 
tion of  Shakespeare  depended  rather  upon  his  poems 
than  upon  his  plays;  almost  as  if  productions  for  the 
stage  were  not  looked  upon,  at  that  date,  as  part  of 
the  recognized  literature  of  the  country."  Collier, 
Life,  XIvVII. 

It  is  plain  that  up  to  the  date  of  the  Folio,  1623, 


326  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

the  poems  and  plays  of  Shakespeare  were  regarded  by 
no  one  as  being  superior  to  the  poems  and  plays  of  a 
dozen  other  authors.*  Between  1592,  when  the  first 
Shakespeare  play  is  said  to  have  been  performed,  and 
1623,  the}7  are  not  spoken  of  in  all  English  Literature 
more  than  twice  a  year,  and  as  I  have  before  said, 
Shakespeare  by  name,  under  any  kind  of  spelling,  was 
mentioned  in  the  twenty- four  years  (1592  to  1616)  but 
twenty  times,  or  less  than  once  a  year.  Think  of  it; 
an  age  prolific  of  poets  and  prose  writers,  and  diaries 
and  note-books;  an  age  devoted  to  epistolary  corre- 
spondence; and  the  great  Shakespeare  was  spoken 
of  (teste  Ingleby),  but  twenty  times  in  the  twenty- 
four  years  during  which  William  Shaksper  is  supposed 
by  his  followers  to  have  been  writing  and  publishing 
the  plays  afterwards  gathered  into  the  Folio.  Plainly, 
as  an  individual  he  was  unknown,  and  as  a  poet  or 
play- writer  he  was  almost  unknown,  and  wholly  un- 
appreciated, as  Ingleby  declares  was  the  fact. 

If  any  poet  of  that  day  was  held  in  special  venera- 
tion, it  was  Sidney,  the  author  of  Astrophel  and 
Stella,  and  not  improbably,  the  author  of  the  Sonnets 
ascribed  to  "Shakespeare".  Twice  is  he  mentioned 
in  the  references  of  Ingleby  as  apart  from  and  above 
all  other  poets  of  that  age;  whereas  "Shakespeare"  is 
never  so  spoken  of,  but  is  always  ranked  with  the 
common  herd.  Moreover  the  poems — the  V.  and  A. 

*  Yet  Dr.  A.  H.  Strong,  in  his  very  interesting  book,  '  'The 
Great  Poets  and  their  Theology,  Phila.,  1897,"  can  say  of  Shake- 
speare: "His  pre-eminence  as  a  dramatist  and  poet  was  uni- 
versally acknowledged, "  /.  e,y  when  he  retired  from  the  theater, 
1611,  to  his  death,  1616. 


THE   FIRST   FOLIO.  327 

and  L,ucrece — were  considered  to  be  on  a  much  higher 
plane  than  the  plays.  On  this,  H.-P.,  I,  119,  says: 
'  'The  contemporaries  of  Shakespeare  allude  more  than 
once  to  the  poems  as  being  his  most  important  works, 
and  as  those  on  which  his  literary  reputation  chiefly 
rested". 

Jonson  had  a*  high  appreciation  of  his  own  plays,  and 
would  have  scorned  the  suggestion  that  those  of 
Shakespeare  stood  on  a  level  with  them — much  more 
on  a  higher  level.  In  one  of  Du  Maurier's  cuts,  a 
young  woman  asks  an  author  if  he  ever  reads  novels. 
The  emphatic  reply  is,  "No,  I  write  them".  As  a 
rule  authors  do  not  read  the  works  of  each  other,  in 
the  same  line,  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  Jonson  never 
read,  or  even  looked  at,  the  proof  or  text  of  the  Folio 
to  which  he  was  about  to  act  as  sponser.  He  was  a 
busy  man,  and  besides  had  a  way  of  spending  his 
spare  hours  at  the  Mermaid.  That  he  had  no  great 
opinion  of  the  Shakespeare  Plays  is  evident  from  the 
fact  that  in  his  own  plays  he  repeatedly  sneered  at  one 
or  other  of  them.  As  to  praise  of  them,  or  approval 
of  them,  there  is  not  a  syllable  in  Jonson 's  works.  In 
the  Prologue  to  "Every  Man  in  His  Humour,"  he  ridi- 
cules Henry  VI  and  the  Winter's  Tale.  In  the  Intro- 
duction to  Bartholomew  Fair,  he  does  the  same  to  the 
Tempest.  In  his  Ode,  appended  to  the  New  Inn,  he 
styles  Pericles  "a  mouldy  tale,  and  nasty  as  the  fish- 
scraps  out  of  every  dish  thrown  forth  and  raked  into 
the  common  tub."  In  the  "Poetaster"  he  scolds  at 
the  new-coined  words  with  which  the  Shakespeare 
works  were  sprinkled.  In  1619,  he  told  Drummond 
that  Shakespeare  wanted  art. 


328        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPKARE. 

After  the  issue  of  the  Folio,  notwithstanding  what 
he  had  said  in  the  verses  thereto  prefixed,  in  the 
enumeration  of  all  the  wits  he  had  known  (or  of  his 
time)  "who  could  honor  a  language  or  help  study", 
left  behind  him  at  his  death  (1637),  he  makes  no 
mention  of  Shakespeare  or  his  works — actually  forgot 
him  and  them !  * 

It  shows  that  Shakespeare  was  not  appreciated  in 
his  own  age;  nor  was  he  thought  anything  superior 
during  the  rest  of  the  iyth  century,  and  indeed,  dur- 
ing most  of  the  i8th  century. 

In  1 66 1,  Evelyn  noted  in  his  diary  that  he  saw 
Hamlet  played;  "but  the  old  plays  begin  to  disgust 
this  refined  age".  Pepys,  30  Sept.,  1662,  records: 
"To  the  King's  Theater,  where  we  saw  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream,  which  I  had  never  seen  before,  nor 
ever  shall  again,  for  it  is  the  most  insipid,  ridiculous 
play  that  ever  I  saw  in  my  life".  1661-2:  March  i: 
"To  the  Opera  and  there  saw  Romeo  and  Juliet.  .  .  . 
It  is  a  play  of  itself  the  worst  that  ever  I  heard  in  my 
life."  1662-3,  Jan  6:  "There  saw  'Twelfth-Night' 
acted  well,  though  it  be  but  a  silly  play."  1667, 
Nov.  i:  "My  wife  and  myself  to  the  King's  Play- 
house, and  there  saw  a  silly  play  and  an  old  one, 
'The  Taming  of  a  Shrew.'  " 

*Jonson  could  scarcely  have  had  a  very  high  opinion  of 
Shakespeare's  genius,  since  a  quarter  of  a  century  passed 
(1598-1623)  before  he  pens  a  single  line  in  his  praise.  And 
when  at  last  the  laudatory  verses  do  appear,  we  are  sure  he  was 
paid  for  writing  them.  His  testimony  is  not,  therefore,  a 
spontaneous  expression  of  his  own  sentiments,  but  a  business 
advertisement."  T.  W.  White,  162, 


THE   FIRST   FOUO.  329 

John  Dry  den,  1679,  (Ing.,  369),  wrote  thus:  "It 
must  be  allowed  to  the  present  Age,  that  the  tongue  in 
general  is  so  much  refined  since  Shakespeare's  time, 
that  many  of  his  words  and  more  of  his  Phrases,  are 
scarce  intelligible.  And  of  those  which  we  under- 
stand, some  are  ungramniatical,  others  coarse,  and  his 
whole  style  is  so  pestered  with  Figurative  expressions, 
that  it  is  affected  as  it  is  obscure,  .  .  .  How  de- 
fective Shakespear  and  Fletcher  have  been  In  all  their 
plots,  Mr.  Ryiner  has  discovered  in  his  Criticisms. 
.  .  .  In  the  mechanic  beauties  of  the  Plot,  which 
are  the  Observation  of  the  three  Unities,  Time,  Place, 
and  Action,  they  are  both  deficient;  but  Shakespeare 
most. ' '  And  so  Dryden  undertook  to  re-write  Troilus 
and  Cressida — from  the  Preface  to  which  play  the  re- 
marks above  are  taken.  In  his  own  words,  "because 
there  appeared  in  some  places  of  it  the  admirable 
genius  of  the  Author,  I  undertook  to  remove  the  heap 
of  Rubbish  under  which  many  excellent  thoughts  lay 
wholly  bury'd." 

On  p.  350,  1672,  Dryden  says:  "Let  any  man  who 
understands  English,  read  diligently  the  works  of 
Shakespeare  and  Fletcher;  and  I  dare  undertake  he 
will  find  in  every  page,  either  some  solecism  of  speech, 
or  some  notorious  flaw  in  sense.  .  .  .  That  their 
wit  is  great  and  many  times  their  expressions  noble, 
envy  itself  cannot  deny;  but  the  times  were  ignorant 
in  which  they  lived.  Poetry  was  then,  if  not  in  its 
infancy  among  us,  at  least  not  arrived  to  its  vigor  and 
maturity;  witness  the  lameness  of  their  plots,  etc. 
.  .  .  Many  of  the  rest,  as  The  Winter's  Tale, 
Love's  Labour's  Lost,  Measure  for  Measure,  which 


330        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

were  either  grounded  on  impossibilities,  or  at  least  so 
meanly  written  that  the  Comedy  neither  caused  your 
mirth,  nor  the  serious  part  your  concernment.  .  .  . 
In  reading  some  bombast  speeches  of  Macbeth,  which  are 
not  to  be  understood,  he  (Ben  Jonson)  used  to  say  that 
it  was  horrour,  and  I  am  much  afraid  that  this  is  so. 
The  wit  of  the  last  age  was  still  more  incor- 
rect than  their  language.  Shakespeare,  who  many 
times  has  written  better  than  any  poet,  in  any  lan- 
guage, is  yet  so  far  from  writing  wit  always,  or  ex- 
pressing that  wit  according  to  the  dignity  of  the  sub- 
ject, that  he  writes  in  many  places  below  the  dullest 
writer  of  ours,  or  of  any  precedent  age.  .  .  .  Iyet 
us  therefore  admire  the  beauties  and  the  heights  of 
Shakespeare,  without  falling  after  him  in  a  careless- 
ness, and,  as  I  may  call  it,  a  lethargy  of  thought,  for 
whole  scenes  together."  And  yet  these  criticisms 
were  penned  but  fifty  years  after  the  publication  of  the 
Folio,  and,  twenty  years  earlier,  the  bombast  speeches 
of  Macbeth,  "which  are  not  to  be  understood"  in 
Dryden's  day,  are  imagined  to  have  been  spouted  in 
Shaksper's  public  theaters,  and  comprehended  by  the 
rabble  which  frequented  them! 

Thomas  Rymer  (1661-1713),  published  a  "Short 
View  of  Tragedy".  He  was  an  eminent  man  of  let- 
ters and  a  voluminous  author  both  in  verse  and  prose; 
in  1692,  he  was  appointed  by  William  and  Mary  his- 
toriographer royal.  What  Rymer  says  of  Shake- 
speare in  his  '  'Short  View' ' ,  taken  in  connection  with 
Dryden's  criticism  in  the  same  century,  and  that  of 
Johnson  and  Hume  in  the  next  century,  may  be  con- 
sidered as  expressing  the  opinion  of  most  of  the  cul- 


THE  FIRST  FOUO.  331 

tivated  people  of  those  times.  Of  Othello,  Rymer 
says:  "There  is  in  this  play  some  burlesque,  some 
humor  and  ramble  of  comical  wit,  some  show;  and 
some  mimicry  to  divert  the  spectators;  but  the  tragical 
part  is  plainly  none  other  than  a  bloody  farce  without 
salt  or  savor."  Of  Julius  Caesar:  "In  the  former 
play,  our  poet  might  be  the  bolder,  the  persons  being 
all  his  own  creatures  and  mere  fiction.  .  .  .  He 
might  be  familiar  with  Othello  and  lago,  as  his  own 
natural  acquaintances;  but  C&sar  and  Brutus  were  above 
his  conversation.  To  put  them  in  fools'  coats,  and 
make  them  Jack-puddings  in  the  Shakespeare  dress, 
is  a  sacrilege  beyond  anything  in  Spelman.  The  truth 
is,  this  author's  head  was  full  of  villanous,  unnatural 
images,  and  history  has  only  furnished  him  with  great 
names,  thereby  to  recommend  them  to  the  world." 
Ing.  367. 

Dr.  Johnson  (1765)  comments  on  the  Shakespeare 
plays  thus: 

Of  Hamlet:  "The  pretended  madness  of  Hamlet 
caused  mirth.  .  .  .  The  catastrophe  is  not  very 
happily  introduced.  A  scheme  might  easily  be  formed 
to  kill  Hamlet  with  the  dagger  and  Laertes  with  the 
bowl."  Johnson  severely  criticizes  others  of  these 
plays;  says  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  that  "it  is  low, 
and  without  any  art  of  connection  or  care  of  disposi- 
tion." Of  Cymbeline,  he  does  not  care  "to  waste 
criticism  upon  unresisting  imbecility",  etc.  And 
the  great  Doctor  tells  us  that  if  any  of  his  contempo- 
raries were  to  write  plays  like  those  of  Shakespeare, 
the  audiences  would  not  sit  them  out. 


332  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

David  Hume,  Hist.  Eng.,  App.  to  James  I,  1764, 
said: — 

"If  Shakespeare  be  considered  as  a  man,  born  in  a 
rude  age,  and  educated  in  the  lowest  manner,  without 
any  instruction  either  from  the  wrorld  or  from  books, 
he  may  be  regarded  as  a  prodigy;  if  represented  as  a 
poet,  capable  of  furnishing  a  proper  entertainment  to  a 
refined  or  intelligent  audience ',  we  must  abate  much  of 
the  eulogy.  ...  A  striking  peculiarity  of  senti- 
ment, adapted  to  a  single  character,  he  frequently  hits, 
as  it  were,  by  inspiration,  but  a  reasonable  propriety 
of  thought  he  cannot  for  any  time  uphold.  It 

is  in  vain  we  look  either  for  purity  or  simplicity  of  diction. 
His  total  ignorance  of  all  theatrical  art  and  conduct,  etc. 

( 'A  great  and  fertile  genius  he  certainly  possessed, 
and  one  enriched  equally  with  a  tragic  and  comic  view; 
but  he  ought  to  be  cited  as  a  proof,  how  dangerous  it 
is  to  rely  on  these  advantages  alone  for  attaining  an 
excellence  in  the  fine  arts.  And  there  may  even  re- 
main a  suspicion  that  we  overrate,  if  possible,  the  great- 
ness of  his  genius;  in  the  same  manner  as  bodies  often 
appear  more  gigantic,  on  account  of  their  being  dis- 
proportioned  and  misshapen.  .  .  .  Both  of  them,  • 
(Shakespear&and  Jonson)  were  equally  deficient  in  taste 
and  elegance,  in  harmony  and  character;  and  thence 
it  has  proceeded  that  the  nation  has  undergone,  from 
all  its  neighbors,  the  reproach  of  barbarism,  from 
which  its  valuable  productions  in  some  other  parts  of 
learning  would  otherwise  have  exempted  it. ' ' 

There  was  no  time  between  1592  and  1800  when  the 
common  run  of  people  understood  or  appreciated  the 
Shakespeare  plays.  Most  of  them  were  beyond  the  ca- 


THE:  FIRST  FOLIO.  333 

pacity  of  the  play-goers,  and  they  might  in  large  part 
as  well  have  been  written  in  Greek.  The  public  could 
understand  the  spectacle,  or  special  scenes  and  parts 
of  a  play,  but  the  metaphysical  and  philosophical 
language,  which  forms  a  large  part  of  nearly  all  the 
plays,  was  incomprehensible,  and  doubtless  was  omitted 
in  the  performance.  After  the  Restoration,  nearly  ev- 
ery playwright  took  in  hand  one  or  more  Shakespeare 
plays  to  re-write,  re-model,  and  improve  it.  In  some 
cases  two  of  the  plays  were  made  into  one.  Dr.  Doran 
says  that  it  seemed  to  be  the  idea  of  these  men  that  it 
was  necessary  to  reduce  Shakespeare  to  the  mental  level 
of  the  play-goers.  If  that  were  the  case  in  the  last 
part  of  the  iyth  century,  how  unappreciated  must 
these  plays  have  been  in  the  last  half  of  the  i6th  cen- 
tury when  the  "people  were  gross  and  dark,"  .  .  . 
"but  just  emerging  from  barbarism",  as  Dr.  Johnson 
declares — how  little  understood.  Therefore,  the  as- 
sertion is  thoughtless  that  the  plays  were  written  for 
the  entertainment  of  the  audiences  at  the  theaters  of 
Elizabeth's  day.  The  author  of  these  plays  had  in 
mind  the  public  of  a  future,  and  much  more  enlight- 
ened, age. 

What  does  Jonson  when  ordered  to  compose  verses 
laudatory  of  player  Shaksper,  and  at  the  same  time 
of  plays  which  for  years  he  had  been  sneering  at  and 
ridiculing?  At  last  he  has  a  chance  to  pay  off  old 
scores  with  the  usurer-player,  the  rich  charlatan,  the 
poet-ape,  who  was  now  to  masquerade  as  the  author 
of  these  plays.  So  he  begins: 


334  SHAKSP^R   NOT 

".     .     .     Soul  of  the  Age 

The  applause,  delight  and  wonder  of  our  stage, 
My  Shakespeare,  rise;  I  will  not  lodge  thee  by 
Chaucer  or  Spenser,  or  bid  Beaumont  lie 
A  little  further  to  make  thee  a  room." 

Of  this  Ingleby  says:  "I  will  not  lodge  thee",  etc., 
means  that  he  will  not  class  Shakespeare  with  Chaucer, 
and  the  rest  because  he  is  out  of  all  proportion  greater 
than  they"  This  was  a  monstrous  exaggeration,  and 
could  only  have  been  spoken  in  irony,  considering  the 
estimation  in  which  the  Shakespeare  plays  had  been 
held  up  to  that  time  and  the  general  ignorance  among 
cultivated  men  respecting  them.  We  know  positively, 
through  the  labors  of  Phillipps  and  Ingleby,  that  this 
ignorance  was  general.  If  no  one  wrote  of  the  plays, 
it  was  because  nobody  spoke  of  them.  So  far  they 
had  acquired  no  reputation  at  all. 

Even  after  the  publication  of  the  Folio,  they  were 
not  popular,  and  found  few  readers.  Dr.  Johnson 
(L,ife  of  Milton)  says:  "To  prove  the  paucity  of 
readers,  it  may  be  sufficient  to  remark  that  the  nation 
had  been  satisfied  from  1623  to  1664,  that  is,  forty- 
one  years,  with  only  two  editions  of  Shakespeare, 
which  probably  did  not  together  make  one  thousand 
copies."  Probably  not  more  than  one-half  of  a  thou- 
sand, for  "George  Steevens  estimates  that  the  (first) 
edition  numbered  250  copies".  I^ee,  305. 

It  is  a  surprising  fact,  Ingleby  being  witness,  that 
there  is  not  one  word  of  praise  of  the  works  of  Shake- 
speare, plays  or  poems,  between  1592  and  1623,  by  any 
dramatist  or  poet  of  the  first  or  second  rank.  Noth- 
ing from  such  men  but  an  occasional  allusion  to  a  play 


THE   FIRST   FOLIO.  335 

or  poem,  often  distant.  Not  one  word  in  commenda- 
tion of  author  or  works.  Whatever  in  Ingleby's 
Centime  of  Prayse  is  really  praise  was  written  by  men 
of  no  mark  whatever,  usually  of  the  Weever  and 
Digges  stamp.  Such  men  were  not  qualified  to  judge 
of  the  works  of  Shakespeare,  or  of  appreciating  them 
in  the  slightest  degree,  and  they  were  as  likely  to  at- 
tribute their  production  to  a  player  at  the  Curtain  as 
to  anyone  else.  As  Mr.  T.  W.  White  says:  "Why 
have  we  nothing  from  Thomas  Kyd,  George  Peele, 
Thomas  Lodge,  George  Chapman,  Samuel  Daniel,  Ben 
Jonson,  Michael  Dray  ton,  Christopher  Marlowe, 
Thomas  Dekker,  John  Marston,  John  Fletcher,  Fran- 
cis Beaumont.  John  Middleton,  or  Philip  Massinger? 
They  were  all  contemporaries,  poets  and  dramatists' ' . 
148. 

Kven  Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  published 
1621,  while  it  quotes  Spenser,  Sidney  and  other  poets 
of  that  age,  never  mentions  Shakespeare.  Evidently, 
Halliwell-Phillipps'  "bard  of  our  admiration"  or 
"great  dramatist",  had  not  revealed  himself  to  the 
other  great  writers  of  that  generation.  Dr.  Ingleby 
expresses  surprise  that  not  only  among  the  poets  and 
dramatists  above  named,  but  such  writers,  or  "great 
names",  as  Lord  Brooke,  Lord  Bacon,  Seldeu,  Sir 
John  Beaumont,  Henry  Vaughan,  and  Lord  Claren- 
don, no  pains  of  research  could  connect  the  most 
trivial  allusion  to  the  Bard  or  his  works;  and  he 
quotes  approvingly  Gerald  Massey's  remarks  that 
"Shakespeare's  contemporaries  had  no  adequate  con- 
ception of  what  manner  of  man  or  majesty  of  mind 


336  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKKSPEARK. 

were  amongst  them.  We  know  him  better  than  they 
did." 

It  was  this  very  Folio  which  Jonson  was  so  care- 
lessly prefacing  that  was  to  create  and  maintain  a 
reputation  for  the  Shakespeare  plays  that  should  fill 
the  whole  earth — but  not  in  Jonson 's  day,  or  for  two 
hundred  years  after.  Up  to  1623,  no  man  could  have 
known  there  were  Shakespeare  plays  except  through 
the  Quarto  copies  of  single  plays  stigmatized  in  a 
lump  by  the  ostensible  editors  of  the  Folio,  as  stolen 
and  surreptitious,  and  but  twelve  of  the  great  plays 
had  borne  the  name  of  William  Shakespeare.  Several 
of  the  greatest  plays  of  the  series  were  to  appear  in 
this  Folio  for  the  first  time. 

Therefore  Jonson' s  praises  of  the  plays  were  pur- 
posely beyond  all  reason,  ironical.  The  next  lines 
touch  up  the  player: 

"For  though  thou  hast  small  Latin  and  less  Greek 
From  thence  to  honor  thee  I  would  not  seek 
For  names;  but  call  forth  thundering  Aeschylus, 
Euripides  and  Sophocles  to  us, 
Pacuvius,  Accius,  him  of  Cordova  dead, 
To  life  again  to  hear  thy  buskin  tread 
And  shake  a  stage;  or  when  thy  socks  were  on, 
Leave  thee  alone  for  the  comparison 
Of  all  that  insolent  Greece  or  haughty  Rome 
Sent  forth  or  since  did  from  their  ashes  come. 
Triumph,  my  Britain,  thou  hast  one  to  show 
To  whom 'all  scenes  of  Europe  homage  owe." 

We  have  before  seen  that  "small  Latin"  at  that  day 
meant  a  lack  of  any  education  at  all,  and  this  was 
doubtless  what  Jonson  intended  to  signify.  As  to  his 
rank  as  a  player,  we  have  also  seen  that  William 


THE  FIRST  FOLIO.  337 

Shaksper  was  a  very  inferior  one.  He  was  scarcely 
mentioned  by  contemporaries  at  all,  and  when  he  was, 
it  was  in  connection  with  no  histrionic  power.  He 
was  one  of  the  clowns,  a  pupil  of  Kempe,  and  what 
sort  of  man  Kempe  was,  Dr.  Rolfe's  picture  shows  us. 
Therefore,  to  talk  about  bringing  Pacuvius,  Accius, 
and  Seneca  to  life  again,  to  hear  this  player's  buskin 
tread,  and  shake  a  stage,  ''or  when  thy  socks  are  on" 
— that  is,  when  you  are  jigging  it  on  boards  and 
barrel-heads,  or  playing  at  the  Curtain  or  the  Globe — 
nothing  that  Greece  or  Rome,  or  later  ages,  have  pro- 
duced can  hold  a  candle  to  you;  that  Britain  may 
triumph,  for  now  she  has  an  actor  to  whom  all  Europe 
confesses  homage — to  talk  in  this  way  is  not  laudatory, 
or  friendly,  but  abusive,  defamatory,  scurrilous. 

Remember  Jonson  was  apostrophizing  a  man  who 
had  got  rich  and  gave  himself  airs  (coat-armour,  etc.) 
by  running  a  public  theater,  the  lowest  place  of  enter- 
tainment, a  center  of  organized  vice,  who  belonged  to 
a  despised  occupation,  whom  no  one  confessed  to  hav- 
ing known,  but  who  was  set  up  as  the  writer  of  these 
plays. 

Suppose  that  Jones,  of  Allegheny,  had  just  delivered 
a  speech  in  the  New  York  Assembly,  when  up  jumps 
Rogers,  of  Cattaraugus,  and  apostrophizes  Jones  as  the 
Soul  of  the  Age,  the  applause,  delight  and  wonder  of 
all  creation,  far  ahead  of  Clay,  Webster,  Kverett,  not 
to  say  Demosthenes  or  Cicero,  and  calls  on  America  to 
triumph,  for  she  has  one  now  to  show  to  whom  all 
Christendom  owes  homage.  I  am  inclined  to  think 
there  would  be  a  fight  in  two  minutes,  and  that  Jones 


338  SHAKSPER   NO^   SHAKKSP£AR£. 

would  be  justified  in  tackling  Rogers  for  deriding  and 
lampooning  him. 

Then  Jonson  turns  to  the  surviving  author,  and 
hints  that  this  sweet  Swan  may  show  itself  again: 

"What  a  sight  it  were, 
To  see  thee  in  our  waters  yet  appear, 
And  make  those  flights  upon  the  bank  of  Thames, 
That  did  so  take  Eliza  and  our  James. ' ' 

He  closes,  by  calling  on  him,  if  he  means  to  do  it  at 
all,  to  be  quick,  for  '  'since  thy  flight"  (thy  disappear- 
ance, thy  seclusion,  the  cessation  of  the  plays)  "the 
drooping  stage  has  mourned  like  night" — because  it 
cannot  get  a  new  supply  of  plays.  So  "Shine  forth, 
thou  Star  of  Poets, ' '  give  us  some  more  new  plays, 
pray. 

And  see  the  man  chuckle  as  he  writes  at  the  tail  of 
his  verse  under  the  cut,  the  notice  to  the  reader,  that 
since  he  cannot  expect  him  to  discover  the  wit  of 
which  he  has  been  talking  in  that  stolid  figure-head, 
"Why  reader,  look  not  at  the  Picture,  but  his  Book". 

It  has  been  suggested  that  Jonson  had  recently, 
(since  his  conversation  with  Drummond,  1619,) 
learned  the  secret  of  these  plays,  but  was  loyal  to  the 
interest  of  the  author,  or  one  of  them,  still  living  in 
1623,  and  he  entreats  him  to  cheer  again  the  drooping 
stage.  "What  a  sight  it  were  to  see  thee  in  our  waters 
yet  appear. ' '  Donnelly  well  says,  p.  96 :  '  'How  comes  it 
that  Jonson  expresses  the  hope  that  the  author  would 
reappear,  and  write  new  plays,  and  cheer  the  drooping 
stage,  and  shine  forth  again,  if  he  referred  to  the  man 


FIRST   FOtlO.  339 

whose  moldering  relics  had  been  lying  in  the  Strat- 
ford church  for  seven  years?" 

We  have  seen  that  the  Shakespeare  plays  were  not 
written  for  the  rabble  who  crowded  the  narrow  limits 
of  the  Curtain  and  Globe,  "illiterate,  who  could  not 
for  the  most  part  read  and  write";  but  also  that  they 
were  not  understood  even  by  the  better  class  of 
people.  The  earliest  real  appreciation  came  in  the 
first  third  of  the  igth  century.  For  Jonson  to  pretend 
to  go  into  exstacies  over  the  plays,  and  over  player 
Shaksper,  lauding  him  as  one  of  whom  Britain  was 
proud,  was  all  of  a  piece,  and  can  only  be  explained  by 
his  intention  to  deride  the  man  and  the  pretensions  set 
up  for  him. 

All  the  early  commentators  took  the  ground  that  Jon- 
son  was  envious  of  the  player,  whom  they,  the  com- 
mentators, held  to  have  been  Shakespeare,  the  author, 
and  embraced  every  opportunity  to  sneer  at  and  de- 
preciate him.  Thus  Steevens  says:  "The  whole  of 
Jonson 's  Prologue  to  Every  Man  in  his  Humour  is  a 
malicious  sneer  at  Shakspere".  Malone  talks  about 
the  baseness  and  malignity  of  Jonson's  conduct  towards 
Shakspere.  Gifford,  L,ife  of  Jonson,  says:  "Mr. 
Malone  quotes  the  passage  in  more  than  one  place  to 
evince  the  malignity  of  Jonson." 

Reed  says:  "Jonson's  insincerity  was  for  two  hun- 
dred years  a  matter  of  universal  comment  among 
scholars;  Dryden,  Malone,  Steevens,  Chalmers,  and 
others,  had  no  doubt  on  the  subject."  And  scholars 
would  be  of  the  same  mind  to-day,  had  not  the  recent 
appreciation  of  these  plays  reduced  Jonson's  panegyric 
within  bounds.  Two  things  happened  which  Jonson 


34°  SHAKSPER   NOT 

did  not  foresee.  The  first,  that  the  genesis  of  the 
myth  that  Shaksper  was  the  author  of  the  Poems  and 
Plays  was  right  there,  in  those  verses;  the  second, 
that — and  it  would  have  astonished  Jonson  not  a 
little — in  the  lapse  of  the  centuries,  his  praises,  which 
in  1623,  if  understood  literally,  were  extravagant  and 
ridiculous,  would  come  to  be  regarded  as  within  the 
truth — that  the  reputation  of  these  plays  should  have 
far  outgrown  that  of  any  and  all  the  works  of  other 
poets  and  dramatists  of  Elizabeth's  day.  The  verses 
that  in  1623,  if  soberly  written,  were  lies,  to-day  are 
truths.  Jonson  had  said  in  his  epigram  on  Poet- Ape, 
by  whom  some  authors  understand  manager  Shaksper: 

The  sluggish  gaping  auditor     .     .     . 

.     .     .     marks  not  whose  twas  first;  and  aftertimes 

May  judge  it  to  be  his. 

Fool!  as  if  half  eyes  will  not  know  a  fleece 

From  locks  of  wool,  or  shreds  from  the  whole  piece. 

The  half  eyes  for  three  hnndred  years  have  taken 
the  locks  of  wool  for  the  whole  fleece,  led  uninten- 
tionally to  do  so  by  Jonson  himself. 

As  we  have  seen,  Mr.  Fleay,  while  not  denouncing 
Jonson' s  affectations  as  malicious,  tells  us,  that  in  his 
opinion,  no  value  is  to  be  attributed  to  them,  that  is, 
that  Jonson  was  insincere. 

In  1619,  three  years  after  Shaksper 's  death,  and  four 
years  before  the  eulogistic  verses  appeared  in  the  Folio, 
Jonson  visited  William  Drummond  of  Hawthornden, 
another  poet,  and  Drummond  entered  in  his  note-book 
Jonson' s  remarks  on  the  poets  and  play-wrights  of  his 
time.  So  much  as  relates  to  Shakespeare  is  given  by 


THE   FIRST   FOLIO.  341 

Ingleby,  p.  129:)  "His  censure  (opinion)  of  the  Eng- 
lish Poets  was  this  .  .  .  that  Shakespeer  wanted 
art."  "Sheakspear  in  a  play  brought  in  a  number  of 
men  saying  they  had  suffered  ship-wreck  in  Bohemia, 
wher  yr  is  no  sea  neer  by  some  100  miles". 
In  the  verses  of  the  Folio,  Jonson  says: 

"Yet  must  I  not  give  nature  all;  thy  Art, 
My  gentle  Shakespeare,  must  enjoy  a  part; 
For  though  the  Poet's  matter  Nature  be 
His  Art  doth  give  the  fashion;  and  that  he 
Who  casts  to  write  a  living  line  must  sweat 
(Such  as  thine  are)  and  strike  the  second  beat 
Upon  the  Muse's  anvil;  turn  the  same 
And  himself  with  it,  that  he  thinks  to  frame, 
Or  for  the  laurel  he  may  gain  a  scorn, 
For  a  good  poet 's  made,  as  well  as  born. 
And  such  wert  thou!     Look  how  the  father's  face 
Lives  in  his  issue,  even  so  the  race 
Of  Shakespeare's  mind  and  manners  brightly  shines 
In  his  well-turned  and  true-filed  lines." 

Iii  1619,  Jonson  told  Drummond  that  Shakespeare 
wanted  art;  in  1623,  he  says  Shakespeare  has  art — 
plenty  of  it;*  he  is  a  poet  and  made  so  by  labor;  he  had 
had  to  sweat  for  it,  to  write  and  re- write,  "strike  the 
second  heat  upon  the  anvil".  "You  are  by  nature  a 
poet,  but  a  good  poet  is  made  as  well  as  born".  (And 
such  wert  thou;  witness  thy  well-turned  and  true- 
filed  lines)." 

There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  Jonson  ex- 
pressed to  Drummond,  in  1619,  his  then  candid  opin- 
ion of  the  plays  of  Shakespeare.  By  1623,  he  had 

*I  have  before  quoted  John  Taylor's  line:  "Spenser  and 
Shakespeare  did  in  art  excel." 


342  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

apparently  experienced  an  entire  change  of  heart,  and 
in  the  prefatory  verses  gave  a  directly  opposite  opinion. 
But,  as  addressed  to  Shaksper,  the  player,  on  the  the- 
ory that  he  was  the  Shakespeare,  every  line  is  not 
merely  inapplicable,  but  absurd.  Not  one  of  the 
Shaksperolaters  believes  that  the  "bard  of  his  admi- 
ration" labored  over  the  plays;  on  the  contrary,  most 
of  them  hold  with  Phillipps  that  this  man  alone  of  all 
mortals  since  the  days  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  wrote 
under  immediate  inspiration,  not  by  design — that  in 
the  odd  half-hours  snatched  from  his  theatrical  duties, 
without  study,  and  without  books,  he  dashed  off  com- 
pleted plays,  Macbeth,  L,ear,  Hamlet,  etc.,  moved  by 
some  beneficent  and  divine  influence  fhat  was  thus 
kindly  helping  him  to  fill  the  pit  and  galleries  of  his 
theater  with  the  stinkards  and  prostitutes  of  I^ondon. 
The  remaining  fraction  will  say  that  Shaksper  had 
picked  up  somewhere  a  little  smattering  of  knowl- 
edge, and  of  languages,  and  that  all  shortcomings, 
such  as  the  sea-coast  of  Bohemia,  were  owing 
to  his  defective  early  advantages.  One  individual, 
Lecturer  Wendell,  of  Harvard,  has  put  it  on  rec- 
ord that  these  plays  are  not  so  extraordinary  as 
people  have  thought,  and  intimates  that  he  knows  of 
a  man,  who,  given  a  few  Elizabethan  books,  and  Coke 
upon  Littleton,  could  compose  plays  after  the  manner 
of  Shakespeare  that  would  surprise  himself,  a  fact 
which  I  doubt  not  at  all.*  But  plainly  these  words  of 

*  Professor  Wendell,  testing  his  theory,  has  published  a 
Shaksperesque  play,  called  Ralegh  in  Guiana,  in  Scribner's 
Magazine,  June,  '97,  from  which  I  cull  a  few  gems.  And  I 
take  the  opportunity  to  say  that  his  mentions  of  Mary  Fitton 


THE   FIRST   FOLIO.  343 

Jonsou  are  totally  unsuited  to  the  Stratford  man,  on 
any  theory  whatever.  The  laudatory  contribution  is 
indivisible,  and  the  votaries  of  the  man  Shakespeare 
cannot  be  allowed  to  appropriate  what  they  like,  and 
ignore  the  rest;  cannot  toss  up  their  caps  at  the  men- 
are  execrable,  baseless,  and  libelous.  If  that  lady  has  any  de- 
scendants in  Harvard,  they  should  take  it  out  with  Professor 
Wendell  on  the  campus: 

"Then  beware  sir,  how  you  loose 

Your  tongue.     My  hair  in  youth  was  red; 

And  though  sea-salt  encrust  it  now  with  gray 

The  head  beneath  stays  hot." 

1  'The  cloudy  monster,  circumstance, 

Affrighting  common  folk,  doth  melt  to  air 

Round  them  that,  plunging  in  her  maw,  dare  vex 

Her  misty  bowels." 
"Lusty  Ben— 

You  know  him?" 

"He  that  makes  the  plays, 

Laid  bricks  once,  slew  a  player,  and  drinks  deep?" 
"The  same,  he  was  my  tutor.     Once  I  plied  him 

Till  he  was  e'en  past  snoring.     Then,  his  heels 

Together,  I  bade  them  lay  him  in  a  cart 

And  carry  him  abroad  through  Paris  streets, 

A  livelier  image  of  a  crucifix 

Than  any  carved  in  France." 
"Keep  the  peace 

Till  then;  and  send  me  for  a  challenger 

Some  stale  companion  of  thy  lady  wife — 

Her  that  the  player  wrote  his  sonnets  for 

And  Pembroke  fooled  with." 

"This  is  worse  than  what  in  other  yeare 

I  thought  my  worst — when  Mary  Fitton,  sir, 

Who  was  my  wife  at  last — played  me  false 

With  one  Will  Shakspere — a  common  player 

That  made  plays,  otherwise  noteless," 


344  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

tion  of  the  Sweet  Swan  of  Avon,  and  smother  the 
testimony  of  Jonson  that  the  Shakespeare  he  has  in 
mind,  and  is  talking  of,  took  infinite  pains  in  shaping 
and  polishing  his  verses.  Further,  that  Shakespeare's 
mind  and  manners  live  in  his  verses  as  the  face  of  a 
father  in  his  sons'  face;  that  is,  the  verses  show  them- 
selves to  be  the  work  of  an  educated  man  and  gentle- 
man, which  Jonson  could  not  possibly  have  said  of  any 
work  of  William  Shaksper,  for  the  sufficient  reason 
that  he  was  neither  an  educated  man,  nor  a  gentle- 
man. 

It  is  certain  that  Jonson  did  not  regard  Shakespeare 
as  a  great  poet,  or  as  exceling  or  equaling  Chaucer, 
Spenser,  and  others,  although  he  pronounced  him  to 
be  a  good  poet;  and  we  know  this  from  Jonson  him- 
self. He  died  in  1637,  fifteen  years  after  the  issue  of 
the  Folio.  In  1641,  there  was  published  his  work 
entitled  "Timber,  or  Discoveries  made  upon  Men  and 
Matter  as  they  have  flowed  out  of  his  daily  Readings, 
or  had  their  reflex  to  his  peculiar  Notion  of  the 
Times."  The  subject-matter  is  in  paragraphs,  each 
under  its  own  heading,  and  was  jotted  down  from 
time  to  time  during  the  last  years  of  his  life.  It  fills 
twenty-five  large,  fine-printed  pages  in  Moxon's  edi- 
tion of  Jonson' s  Works.  On  the  fifth  page,  under  the 
head  of  Memoria,  the  author  speaks  of  himself  as  hav- 
ing passed  forty,  when  his  memory  began  to  fail  him, 
and  as  now  "being  shaken  with  age",  so  that  his 
memory  "cannot  promise  much".  As  Jonson  was  born 
in  1574,  past  forty  would  be  1614,  and  to  be  shaken 
with  age,  past  another  ten  years  at  least.  On  the 
eighth  page,  he  speaks  of  Francis  Bacon,  Dominus 


THE   FIRST   FOUO.  345 

Verulamius,  as  one  who  had  lived.  Bacon  died  in 
1626.  From  these  dates,  it  is  evident  that  nearly,  if 
not  quite,  all  of  these  Discoveries  were  written  after 
the  death  of  Shaksper,  and  after  the  issue  of  the 
Folio. 

On  page  8,  just  after  the  paragraph  on  Bacon  in  the 
Scriptorum  Catalogus,  in  which  he  enumerates  by  name 
many  wits  of  that  and  the  preceding  age  "that  could 
honor  a  language  or  help  study",  and  among  them 
Bacon,  who  had  filled  all  numbers,  "and  performed 
that  in  our  tongue  which  may  be  compared  or  pre- 
ferred either  to  insolent  Greece  or  haughty  Rome"; 
(thus  repeating  the  words  he  had  used  respecting 
"Shakespeare"  in  the  Folio),  he  closes  the  section 
by  saying  that  "Bacon  may  be  named,  and  stand  as  the 
mark  and  the  acme  of  our  language. ' '  As  acme  means 
the  highest  point,  the  pinnacle,  he  here  puts  Bacon, 
who  had  filled  all  numbers,  above  every  other  author 
in  the  language.  He  has  now  no  thought  of  '  'Shakes- 
peare", whom  he  had,  in  1623,  apostrophized  as  the 
Soul  of  the  Age,  the  Star  of  Poets,  the  man  not  for 
an  age,  but  for  all  time;  whose  writings  could  not  be 
praised  too  much;  a  monument  without  a  tomb;  as 
out  of  all  proportion  greater  than  the  hitherto  greatest 
of  English  poets.  And  now,  in  the  Catalogue  of  { 
Writers,  he  has  forgotten  that  such  a  name  existed  in 
English  literature. 

Again,  some  years  later,  under  the  head  of  Prae- 
cipiendi  modi  (iyth  page),  on  the  instruction  of  youth, 
we  find  this:  "Therefore  youth  ought  to  be  instructed 
betimes  and  in  the  best  things.  .  .  .  And  as  it  is 
fit  to  read  the  best  authors  to  youth  first,  so  let  them 


346        SHAKSPKR  NOT  SHAKKSPKARK. 

be  of  the  openest  and  clearest;"  and  he  goes  on  to 
mention  such  authors  as  would  serve  this  purpose, 
Sidney  and  Donne,  Gower  and  Chaucer,  but  again  for- 
gets all  about  Shakespeare. 

Plainly  enough,  notwithstanding  the  praises  heaped 
upon  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  in  the  Folio 
verses,  as  well  as  upon  the  plays  themselves,  Jonson 
did  not  really  hold  Shakespeare  to  be  one  of  the  fore- 
most poets,  and  the  praises  were  simply  ironical.  As 
we  have  seen,  Dr.  Ingleby,  in  his  Preface,  speaks  of 
Jonson' s  omitting  to  mention  Shakespeare,  as  above,  as 
something  remarkable.  There  is  but  one  explanation 
of  the  fact  possible. 

At  an  early  date  in  the  Discoveries,  yth  page,  or  two 
pages  after  the  Memoria,  which  as  we  have  seen,  must 
have  been  written  after  1623,  we  have  De  Shakespeare 
Nostrat,  which  undoubtedly  means  player  Shaksper. 
He  says  he  had  heard  from  the  players,  (all  illiterate 
men,  be  it  remembered)  that  Shakespeare  had  written 
something,  he  knows  not  what,  "whatsoever  he 
penned",  with  such  facility  that  "he  never  blotted  out 
a  line;"  meaning  there  were  no  erasures,  or  alterations 
in  the  manuscript.  His  answer  was  that  from  what  he 
knew  of  the  man,  he  ought  to  have  blotted  out  a 
thousand  lines,  for  he  was  natural^  so  garrulous  and 
blunderheaded,  that  it  could  not  have  been  otherwise. 
Following  the  text,  the  words  are  these: 

"I  remember  the  players  have  often  mentioned  it  as 
an  honor  to  Shakespeare  that  in  his  writing  (whatso- 
ever he  penned)  he  never  blotted  out  a  line.  My 
answer  hath  been,  would  he  had  blotted  a  thousand. 
Which  they  thought  a  malevolent  speech.  I  had  not 


THE   FIRST   FOUO.  347 

told  posterity  this,  but  for  their  ignorance,  who  chose 
that  circumstance  to  commend  their  friend  by,  wherein 
he  most  faulted;  and  to  justify  mine  own  candor;  for  I 
loved  the  man  and  do  honor  his  memory,  on  this  side 
idolatry,  as  much  as  any.  He  was  indeed  honest,  and 
of  an  open  and  free  nature,  had  an  excellent  phantasy; 
wherein  he  flowed  with  that  facility,  that  sometimes  it 
was  necessary  he  should  be  stopped.  Sufflaminandus  erat, 
as  Augustus  said  of  Haterius.  His  wit  was  in  his 
own  power,  would  the  rule  of  it  had  been  so  too. 
Many  times  he  fell  into  those  things  could  not  escape 
laughter;  as  when  he  said  in  the  person  of  Caesar, 
one  speaking  to  him:  'Caesar  thou  dost  me  wrong',  he 
replied,  'Caesar  did  never  wrong  but  with  just  cause', 
and  such  like;  which  were  ridiculous."  * 

*  This  play  was  first  published  in  the  Folio,  and  Act  III,  1.,  7, 

reads: 

"Know  Caesar  doth  not  wrong,  nor  without  cause, 

.     .     .     Will  he  be  satisfied?" 

Probably  player  Shaksper,  in  spouting  his  part  in  a  Caesar 
play,  had  made  the  blunder  Jonson  speaks  of.  H.-P.  II,  257, 
tells  us  that  Caesar  was  a  favorite  subject  for  dramatic  repre- 
sentation from  1579  onward.  There  were  numerous  Caesar 
plays  by  as  many  authors,  and,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  these 
would  be  utilized  in  the  preparation  of  the  Shakespeare  Julius 
Caesar.  Several  of  them  were  based  on  North's  translation  of 
Plutarch's  Life  of  Caesar,  and  naturally  they  would  have  had 
resemblances — indeed  identical  expressions.  Whether  the  Shake- 
speare play  had  ever  been  seen  on  the  stage  before  its  publica- 
tion in  1623  or  not,  is  altogether  uncertain.  There  is  no  direct 
evidence  in  its  favor.  Some  commentators  guess  from  the 
paucity  of  light-endings  and  weak  endings" — all  twaddle — that 
it  was  composed  about  1601.  But  so  far  as  Ingleby's  references 
show,  any  Caesar  performed  before  the  issue  of  the  Folio  must 
have  been  one  of  the  old  plays  mentioned. 


348  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

(Could  Jonson  have  used  such  language  respecting 
the  real  Shakespeare,  the  author  of  Hamlet?) 

In  other  words,  Shaksper  talked  too  much,  and  by 
his  blunders  and  chattering  made  himself  a  laughing- 
stock. Why  Johnson,  while  depreciating  player 
Shaksper  in  one  sentence,  should  have  said  in  the 
next  that  nevertheless  he  almost  idolized  the  man,  and 
loved  him,  and  honored  his  memory,  is  not  apparent, 
unless  it  is  to  be  explained  on  the  ground  that  Jonson 
dearly  loved  to  satirize  his  quondam  friend,  but  recent 
enemy,  and  took  care  that  his  praise  should  be  balanced 
by  his  criticisms. 

Drummond,  in  his  note-book,  entered  this  character 
of  Ben  Jonson:  "He  is  a  great  lover  and  praiser  of 
himself;  a  contemner  and  scorner  of  others;  given 
rather  to  lose  a  friend  than  a  jest;  jealous  of  every 
word  and  action  of  those  about  him,  especially  after 
drink,  which  is  one  of  the  elements  in  which  he 
liveth,"  etc.  Chamber's  Knc.,  Kng.  L,it.,  Jonson. 

If  Jonson  goes,  who  remains,  and  what  becomes  of 
the  Shaksper  myth?  It  had  its  beginning  with 
Jonson,  and  for  nearly  three  hundred  years  has  had 
no  support  whatever  outside  Jonson' s  verses.  The 
apex  of  the  inverted  Shaksper  pyramid  rests  on  that 
little  bit  of  contradictory  testimony. 

The  suggestion  that  the  Shaksper  story  may  be 
mythical,  that  the  well-known  facts  of  Shaksper's  life 
made  it  out  of  the  question  that  he  could  have  written 
the  Shakespeare  plays — the  one  answer  has  been  that 
Jonson  expressly  said  that  Shakespeare,  by  whom  of 
course  he  meant  our  beloved  Swan  of  Avon,  was  the 
Soul  of  the  Age,  the  Star  of  Poets.  Point  out  that 


THE   FIRST   FOUO.  349 

Jonson,  at  other  times  and  places,  expressed  himself 
in  terms  incompatible  -  with  the  sentiment  of  the 
verses,  and  by  omitting  the  author  of  these  plays 
from  a  list  of  good  poets,  or  by  refusing  to  recommend 
his  works  as  worth  study,  showed  that  he  had  but 
a  slight  opinion  of  plays  or  works;  and  hence  it  is 
clear  that  his  praises  in  the  Folio  wrere  not  honest; — 
the  reply  is:  "But  he  said  that  Shakespeare's  writings 
were  such  that  neither  man  nor  Muse  could  praise  too 
much,  and  that  he  soared  far  above  Chaucer  or  Spenser, 
and  that  all  the  world  was  saying  so.  Which  very 
words,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  up  to  1623  nobody 
whatever  had  said  so,  and  that  the  world  neither  knew 
nor  cared  about  these  plays,  are  enough  to  make  it  im- 
possible that  the  verses  could  have  been  written  other- 
wise than  in  joke.  Jonson  never  dreamed  that  such 
hyperbolical  language  could  be  taken  seriously. 

A  clipping  from  a  recent  newspaper  is  instructive  in 
this  matter.  It  is  headed  "Mary's  letter  from  Cali- 
fornia": 

"Why,  she  says  the  red- wood  trees  are  so  tall  that 
it  requires  two  people  to  see  the  top.  It  does  not 
seem  possible — and  strawberries  as  big  as  pineapples. 
Who  ever  heard  the  like?" 

"Don't  you  see,  grandma,  that  Mary  is  only  chaff- 
ing ?  She  purposely  makes  stories  so  big  that  no  one 
will  believe  them.  It  is  just  a  satire  on  the  boastful 
claims  made  for  that  country." 


350  SHAKSPUR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

CHAPTER   XII. 

HBMINGE  AND  CONDKIvL. 

Heminge  and  Condell  (Ing.  143-45),  fellow-players 
of  Shaksper,  are  the  ostensible  editors  of  the  First 
Folio  of  the  collected  plays,  1623,  and  the  apparent 
authors  of  the  Dedication  and  Prefatory  Address. 
The  Dedication  is  to  the  Harls  of  Pembroke  and  Mont- 
gomery, and  in  part  runs  thus: 

"When  we  value  the  places  your  H.H.  sustain,  we 
cannot  but  know  their  dignity  greater  than  to  descend 
to  the  readings  of  these  trifles.  But  since  your  ly.Iy. 
have  been  pleased  to  think  these  trifles  something, 
heretofore",  etc.,  etc. — in  short,  we  venture  to  pub- 
lish them. 

In  the  Address:  "It  had  been  a  thing,  we  confess, 
worthy  to  have  been  wished,  that  the  Author  himself 
had  lived  to  set  forth,  and  overseen  his  own  writings; 
but  since  it  hath  been  ordained,  and  he  by  death  de- 
parted from  that  right,  we  pray  you  do  not  envy  his 
Friends  the  office  of  their  care  and  pain  to  have  col- 
lected them;  and  so  to  have  published  them,  as  where 
(before}  you  were  abused  with  divers  stolen  and  surrep- 
titious copies,  and  deformed  by  the  frauds  and  stealths  of 
injurious  impostors  that  exposed  them'"  (that  is,  "ex 
posed  them  for  sale,  or  published  them",  Craik); 
"even  those  are  now  offered  to  your  view  cured  and  per- 
feet  of  their  limbs,  as  he  conceived  them.  .  .  .  His 
mind  and  hand  went  together;  and  what  he  thought, 


HKMINGK   AND    CONDEU..  351 

he  uttered  with  that  easiness  that  we  have  scarce  re- 
ceived from  him  a  blot  in  his  papers,"  etc.,  etc. 

This  statement,  if  Heminge  and  Condell  really  made 
it,  would  show  that  they  were  totally  ignorant  of  the 
ways  of  authors.  No  manuscript  of  any  length  was 
ever  written  without  corrections,  excisions,  additions, 
erasures,  and  emendations,  and  to  claim  that  here  was 
a  man  who  wrote  a  vast  mass  of  manuscript  with 
scarce  a  blot,  is  so  contrary  to  what  the  fact  must 
have  been,  that  evidently  it  was  not  expected  to  be 
believed.  It  is  ridicule  of  Shaksper'  s  claim  of  author- 
ship of  the  same  nature  as  that  which  runs  through 
Jonson's  mocking  verses.  Indeed  it  is  probable  that 
Jonson  wrote  both  Dedication  and  Address,  as  Malone 
suggests,  and  as  many  Shakespeare  critics  have  be- 
lieved. 

The  Address  distinctly  states  that  Shaksper,  at  his 
death,  still  owned  these  plays;  that  his  friends,  Hem- 
inge and  Condell,  were  at  the  pains  to  have  collected 
the  plays  and  published  them  (implying  oversight); 
that  the  previous  copies  (the  Quartos)  were  stolen  and 
surreptitious,  deformed  by  the  frauds  of  the  impostors 
who  had  published  them;  and  that  the  Folio  copies 
now  offered  were  received  from  Shaksper  himself,  and 
were  cured  and  perfect  of  limb,  just  as  the  author  con- 
ceived them. 

Craik  says,  "English  of  Shakespeare":  "Here  we 
have,  along  with  an  emphatic  and  undiscriminating 
condemnation  of  all  the  preceding  impressions,  a  dis- 
tinct declaration  by  the  publishers  of  the  present  vol- 
ume (H.  &  C.)  that  they  had  the  use  of  the  author's 
manuscripts". 


352  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

Reed  says:  "The  ostensible  editors  were  two  play- 
wrights, formerly  connected  with  the  company  of 
which  William  Shakspere  was  a  member.  Heminge 
appears  also  to  have  been  a  grocer.  In  the  dedication, 
they  characterize  the  Plays,  with  singular  infelicity,  as 
'trifles'.  They  astonish  us  still  more  by  the  use  they 
make  of  Pliny's  Epistle  to  Vespasian,  prefixed  to  his 
Natural  History,  and  not  translated  into  English  till 
1635.  Not  only  are  the  thoughts  of  the  Latin  author 
most  happily  introduced,  but  they  are  amplified  and 
fitted  to  the  purpose  with  consummate  literary  skill." 

Dr.  Ingleby,  note,  144,  says:  "The  first  part  of  the 
peroration  of  this  address  is  so  good  as  to  evoke  the 
suspicion  that  it  is  not  original.  ...  In  truth 
the  beginning  of  the  peroration  is  literally  translated 
from  Pliny's  dedicatory  epistle  to  Vespasian,  prefixed 
to  his  Natural  History,  which  ran  thus:  'Country 
people  and  many  nations  offer  milk  to  their  gods;  and 
they  who  have  not  incense  obtain  their  requests  with 
only  meal  and  salt;  nor  was  it  imputed  to  any  as  a 
fault  to  worship  the  gods  in  whatever  way  they 
could'." 

The  Address  says:  "Country  hands  reach  forth 
milk,  cream,  fruits,  or  what  they  have;  and  many 
Nations  (we  have  heard)  that  had  not  gums  and  in- 
cense obtained  their  requests  with  a  leavened  cake. 
It  was  no  fault  to  approach  their  gods  by  what  means 
they  could;  and  the  most,  though  meanest  of  things, 
are  made  more  precious  when  they  are  dedicated  to 
Temples.  In  that  name,  therefore,  we  most  humbly 
consecrate  to  your  highnesses  these  remains  of  your 
servant  Shakespeare,"  etc. 


HKMINGK   AND   CONDEU,.  353 

Ingleby  further  says:  "The  writer  of  the  Address 
of  1623  added  'cream  and  fruits'  in  one  place  and 
'gums'  in  another;  and  for  mola  salsa  appears  to 
have,  not  unskillfully,  caught  up  Horace's  'farre 
pio\  (Odes,  III,  23,  11,  17-20.)  He  adds,  too,  very 
gracefully,  that  'the  meanest  things  are  made  more 
precious  when  they  are  dedicated  to  temples'."  As 
I  have  quoted  from  Mr.  Reed,  the  thoughts  of  Pliny 
are  not  only  happily  introduced,  but  they  are  amplified 
and  fitted  to  the  purpose  with  consummate  skill. 

Malone  suggests  that  both  Dedication  and  Address 
were  written  by  Ben  Jonson.  Craik  thinks  that  either 
Jonson  "or  another — some  regular  author  of  the  day" 
— were  got  to  write  them.  Bishop  Wordsworth  speaks 
of  the  Address  as  "supposed  to  have  been  written  by 
Ben  Jonson' ' .  Why  Ben  Jonson  ?  Because  it  is  not 
to  be  believed  that  men  of  the  occupation  and  sur- 
roundings of  Heminge  and  Condell  could  have  written 
this  learned  and  ingenious  Dedication  and  Preface. 
Yet  it  is  not  one  thousandth  part  so  wonderful  that 
the  two  strolling  players  should  have  composed  these 
papers  as  that  their  fellow,  William  Shaksper,  should 
have  written  any  one  of  the  Shakespeare  plays.  If 
occupation  and  surroundings  are  against  Heminge 
and  Condell,  much  more  are  the  same  against  Shak- 
sper. 

As  to  these  plays  in  the  Folio  being  perfect,  and  as 
the  author  conceived  them,  whereas  the  Quarto  copies 
were  deformed  by  frauds,  and  imperfect,  published  by 
impostors — R^Disraeli,  in  the  Amenities  of  Authors, 
says:  "Heminge  and  Condell  profess  that  they  have 
done  this  office  to  the  dead  only  to  keep  the  memory 


354  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE}. 

of  so  worthy  a  friend  alive  as  was  our  Shakespeare. 
Yet  their  utter  negligence  shown  in  their  fellow's 
volume  is  no  evidence  of  their  pious  friendship,  nor 
perhaps  of  their  care  or  their  intelligence." 

None  of  the  family  of  Shaksper  had  any  connection 
with  the  publishing  of  the  First  Folio,  of  1623,  (or  any 
subsequent  Folio),  nor  had  his  executors.  On  the 
title  page  it  is  said:  "Printed  by  Isaac  Jaggard  and 
Ed.  Blount,  1623."  At  the  back  of  the  book 
—"Printed  at  the  charges  of  W.  Jaggard,  Ed. 
Blount,  I.  Smithweeke  and  W.  Aspley,  1623".  This 
Jaggard  is  the  man  who,  in  1599,  had  published  a  work 
called  the  Passionate  Pilgrim,  made  up  of  two  sonnets 
of  "Shakespeare"  and  a  few  verses  from  L,ove's  La- 
bour's I/ost,  with  a  good  deal  more  from  other  authors, 
the  whole  attributed  to  William  Shakespeare.* 

H.-P.,  I,  179,  says  of  this  book:  "The  entire  pub- 
lication bears  evident  marks  of  an  attempted  fraud." 
Other  editors  speak  of  Jaggard  as  '  'the  piratical  pub- 
lisher." Well,  he  was  the  proper  man  to  be  connected 
with  the  fraud  now  about  to  be  perpetrated  in  this 
Folio.  The  volume  was  got  out  by  an  association  of 
printers,  Jaggard  being  a  specimen  brick,  and  they 
employed  some  other  than  the  illiterate  fellow-players 
of  Shaksper  to  write  Dedication  and  Preface. 

*  "As  the  publisher  of  'The  Passionate  Pilgrim',  Jaggard 
seems  to  have  learnt  for  the  first  time  that  Shakespeare  was 
what  he  would  doubtless  have  called  a  selling  name.  He  was 
consequently  quite  ready  to  embark  substantial  capital  in  a 
very  large  venture  of  a  complete  collection  of  his  plays.  These 
five  traders — all  of  whom  ignored  and  defied  on  principle  the 
interests  of  contemporary  authors — were  readily  responsible  for 
the  great  First  Folio,"  Sidney  Lee,  Cornhill,  April,  1899,  p.  450. 


AND    CONDEU,.  355 

Dr.  Morgan,  107—9:  ' 'Whatever  literary  property 
then  existed  at  common  law  was  in  the  shape  of  a 
license  to  reprint  a  work  under  the  permission  of  the 
Stationer's  Company.*  Once  in  their  hands,  printers 
did  what  they  pleased  with  a  manuscript;  abridged  it, 
lengthened  it,  altered  it.  They  assigned  the  authorship 
to  any  name  they  thought  would  help  sell  the  book,  and 
dedicated  it  to  whom  they  pleased. ' '  Thus  it  happened, 
that  a  name  on  a  title  page  was  not  evidence  that  the 
individual  so  named  was  the  author  of  the  printed 
book. 

In  the  present  case,  the  name  of  William  Shake- 
speare, "our  fellow",  on  the  title  page,  goes  in  no  way 
as  proof  that  our  fellow  (whose  name  was  not  Shake- 
speare) wrote  these  plays,  or  had  any  connection  with 
them;  and  the  names  of  Heminge  and  Condell  are  no 
evidence  that  they  were  the  real  editors,  or  the  authors 
of  the  Dedication  or  Address.  Between  1595  and  1609, 
anybody  was  free  to  use  the  name  of  William  Shake- 
speare. No  play  is  entered  at  the  Stationer's  Register 
under  this  name,  or  of  Shaksper,  or  Shakspere.  In 
every  case  the  entry  is  for  the  printer.  (See  Fleay, 
Appendix,  L,ife,  where  all  the  plays  entered  at  the 

*  In  1556,  Philip  and  Mary  had  erected  97  booksellers  into  a 
body  called  "The  Stationer's  Company",  who  were  to  monopo- 
lize the  printing  of  books,  if  they  chose.  They  had  given  them 
power  and  authority  to  print  such  books  as  they  obtained,  either 
from  author's  manuscript  or  translations,  and  to  see  very  care- 
fully that  nobody  else  printed  them.  Their  power  was  absolute, 
and  they  were  empowered  ...  to  suppress  any  printed 
matter  they  did  not  choose  to  license,  wherever  they  pleased", 
etc. 


SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

Stationer's  Register  between  1584  and  1640  are 
given. ) 

The  note  in  Iiigleby  upon  the  assertion  that  the 
editors  printed  from  the  author's  manuscript,  reads: 
"If  by  this  they  intended  to  convey  to  the  reader  the 
notion  that  the  text  of  the  Folio  of  1623  was  printed 
from  the  author's  own  manuscript,  they  must  stand 
convicted  of  a  suggestio  falsi;  for  five  at  least  of  the 
plays  included  in  that  volume  are  little  more  than  the 
reprint  of  the  previous  quarto  editions,  characterized 
by  them  as  'surreptitious  copies,'  "  etc. 

In  his  Essays,  1888,  Dr.  Ingleby  again  says:  "I 
suppose  I  must  cite  the  ostensible  editors  of  the  first 
collection  of  Shakespeare's  work  .  .  .  but  un- 
fortunately for  their  credit  and  our  own  satisfaction, 
their  prefatory  statement  contains,  or  at  least  suggests, 
what  they  must  have  known  to  be  false." 

Dowden  says,  233:  "In  their  address  to  the  readers, 
they  profess  to  give  for  the  first  time  the  true  text, 
and  it  is  implied  that  they  printed  from  Shakespeare's 
manuscripts.  As  a  fact,  the  text  abounds  with  er- 
rors, and  in  many  instances  they  evidently  print  from 
the  Quartos." 

The  address  distinctly  states  that  William  Shak- 
sper,  at  his  death,  still  owned  these  plays;  that  his 
friends,  Heminge  and  Condell,  were  at  the  care  and 
pains  to  have  collected  and  published  them  (implying 
oversight,  supervision) ;  that  the  previous  copies — the 
Quartos,  newly  "corrected,  augmented  and  amended" 
— the  second  quarto  of  Romeo  and  Juliet;  or  the  2nd 
quarto  of  Hamlet,  which  Fleay  says  is  much  superior 
to  the  Hamlet  of  the  First  Folio,  and  is  in  the  shape 


HKMINGK   AND   CONDKU,.  357 

fittest  for  private  reading — as  well  as  all  the  rest, 
were  stolen  and  surreptitious,  deformed  by  the  frauds 
of  the  impostors  who  had  published  them — a  declara- 
tion that  Shaksper  had  no  interest  in,  or  connection 
with,  the  Quartos;  and  that  the  Folio  copies  now  of- 
fered were  received  from  William  Shaksper  himself, 
and  are  cured  and  perfect  in  all  respects,  just  as  he 
conceived  them. 

The  commentators,  one  and  all,  either  make  light  of 
these  statements,  or  say  in  effect  that  no  one  is  ex- 
pected to  believe  them.  Craik  says:  "What  they 
say  is  nothing  more  than  the  sort  of  recommendation 
with  which  it  was  customary  for  enlarged  and  improved 
editions  to  be  introduced  to  the  world.  ...  Of 
correction  for  the  press,  there  is  not  one  word. ' '  He 
further  says:  "It  is  not  likely  that  the  two  players, 
who,  with  the  exception  of  this  Dedication  and 
Preface,  to  which  their  names  are  attached,  are  quite 
unknown  in  connection  with  literature,  were  at  all 
qualified  for  such  a  function.  .  .  .  There  is  prob- 
ably not  a  page  in  it  (the  Folio)  which  is  not  dis- 
figured by  many  minute  inaccuracies  and  irregularities. 
The  most  elementary  proprieties  of  the  metrical  ar- 
rangement are  violated  in  innumerable  passages.  In 
some  places  the  verse  is  printed  as  plain  prose;  else- 
where, prose  is  ignorantly  and  ludicrously  exhibited 
in  the  guise  of  verse.  .  .  .  Everything  betokens 
that  editor  or  editing  of  the  volume,  in  any  proper  or 
distinctive  sense,  there  could  have  been  none.  In  one 
instance  (Much  Ado),  we  have  actually  the  names  of 
the  actors  by  whom  the  play  was  performed  prefixed 


SHAKSPER  NOT 

to  their  portions  of  the  dialogue  instead  of  those  of 
the  dramatis  personae, "  etc. 

Mr.  Knight  observes  that  '  'it  shows  very  clearly  the 
text  of  the  play  (Much  Ado)  to  have  been  taken  from 
the  prompter' s  book.  But  the  fact  is,  the  scene  in  ques- 
tion is  given  in  the  same  way  in  the  previous  Quarto 
.edition  of  the  play,  published  in  1600,  so  that  here  the 
printers  had  evidently  no  manuscript  of  any  kind  in 
their  hands,  any  more  than  had  anyone  over  them  to 
prevent  them  from  blindly  following  their  printed  copy 
into  the  most  transparent  absurdities.  ...  In  ad- 
dition to  a  large  number  of  doubtful  or  disputed  pas- 
sages, there  are  many  readings  in  it  (Folio)  which  are 
either  absolutely  unintelligible  and  therefore  corrupt, 
or,  although  not  purely  nonsensical,  yet  clearly  wrong, 
and  at  the  same  time  such  as  are  hardly  to  be  suffi- 
ciently accounted  for  as  to  natural  mistakes  of  the 
compositor.  .  .  .  Such  errors  and  deficiencies  can 
only  be  explained  on  the  supposition  that  the  com- 
positor had  been  left  to  depend  upon  a  manuscript 
which  was  imperfect,  or  which  could  not  be  read." 

'  'Some  of  the  finest  thoughts  and  expressions  are 
found  in  the  quarto  editions,  and  not  in  the  Folio. 
For  instance,  in  the  play  of  Hamlet,  nearly  all  of  Sc. 
IV,  Act  4,  is  found  in  the  Quarto  and  not  in  the 
Folio.  .  .  .  Hundreds  of  other  admirable  sen- 
tences can  be  quoted  which  appear  in  the  Quarto,  but 
not  in  the  Folio.  ...  In  some  respects  the  stolen 
and  surreptitious  copies  of  the  Quarto  are  more  correct 
than  the  Folio,  and  but  for  the  Quarto  we  would  have 
lost  some  of  the  finest  gems  of  thought  and  expres- 


HICMINGE   AND   CONDELt.  359 

sion  which  go  by  the  name  of  Shakespeare."  Don- 
nelly, 90. 

Knight  says  of  Lear:  "Large  passages  which  are 
found  in  the  Quarto  are  omitted  in  the  Folio.  .  .  . 
These  amount  to  as  many  as  two  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  lines;  and  they  comprise  one  entire  scene,  and  one 
or  two  of  the  most  striking  connected  passages  in  the 
drama." 

As  I  have  shown  elsewhere,  many  of  these  plays 
exist  in  several  forms,  brief,  or  more  or  less  enlarged. 
Henry  V,  ist  Ed.,  1603,  contains  1,800  lines;  enlarged 
(Folio,  1623),  contains  3,500  lines.  "In  this  elabora- 
tion the  old  materials  are  very  carefully  used  up;  but 
they  are  so  thoroughly  refitted  and  dovetailed  with 
what  is  new,  that  the  operation  can  only  be  compared 
to  the  work  of  a  skillful  architect,  who,  having  an  an- 
cient mansion  to  enlarge  and  beautify,  with  a  strict 
regard  to  its  original  character,  preserves  every  feature 
of  the  structure,  under  other  combinations,  with  such 
marvelous  skill,  that  no  unity  or  principle  is  violated, 
and  the  whole  has  the  effect  of  a  restoration  in  which 
the  new  and  old  are  undistinguishable" .  Charles 
Knight;  Pictorial  Shakespeare,  Histories,  I,  310. 

Heminge  and  Condell  are  made  to  declare  that  the 
play  of  Henry  V  and  the  rest,  were  printed  from  the 
true  and  original  manuscript,  that  they  "were  absolute 
in  their  numbers  as  he  conceived  them;  that  what  he 
thought,  he  uttered  with  that  easiness,  that  they  have 
scarce  received  from  him  a  blot  in  his  papers. "  From  all 
which  it  appears  that  these  ignorant  players  set  up  as  the 
ostensible  editors  of  the  Folio,  were  made  by  the  writer 
of  the  Dedication  and  Address,  to  lie  repeatedly  and 


360  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE}. 

flagrantly,  and  their,  or  his,  evidence  as  to  the  connec- 
tion of  William  Shaksper  with  these  plays,  is  of  no 
value  whatever.  And  yet,  notwithstanding  the  patent 
fact  that  these  men's  names  were  put  forth  by  a  men- 
dacious writer  of  paid  advertisements,  and  that  there 
is  not  an  iota  of  truth  in  any  one  of  the  statements 
they  are  made  to  utter,  their  testimony  is  regarded  by 
the  Shaksperolaters  as  second  in  value  only  to  that  of 
Jonson,  in  his  verses  prefixed  to  the  same  Folio.  The 
world  is  called  on  to  believe  that  player  Shaksper  wrote 
the  plays  on  the  sole  testimony  of  Jonson,  and  of 
Heminge  and  Condell.  What  Jonson' s  verses  are  worth, 
I  have  shown,  and  here  are  the  others,  self  convicted 
liars.  The  whole  squad  of  writers  who  introduced 
this  Folio  were  of  a  class,  apparently  under  a  contract 
with  the  syndicate  of  publishers  to  chant  the  praises 
of  the  rich  ex- manager.  It  suggests  the  paid  effusions 
on  the  virtues  of  Pears  soap  or  Payne's  Celery  Com- 
pound. 

One  of  these  writers  was  Leonard  Digges,  said  by 
Farmer  to  have  been  a  wit  of  the  town,  and  he  dis- 
courses thus: — 

"Shakespeare  at  length  thy  pious  fellowes  give 
The  world  thy  Works;  thy  works  by  which  outlive 
Thy  Tombe,  thy  name  must;  when  that  stone  is  rent, 
And  Time  dissolves  thy  Stratford  Moniment, 
Here  we  alive  shall  view  these  still." 

The  same  Digges  wrote  later,  in  1640,  also  as  a  prefix 
to  another  Shakespeare  volume,  this  time  the  poems:— 

"Next  nature  only  helped  him,  for  look  through 
This  whole  book,  thou  shalt  find  he  doth  not  borrow 


HKMINGK   AND   CONDEU,.  361 

One  phrase  from  Greeks,  nor  Latins  imitate, 
Nor  from  the  vulgar  languages  translate, 
Nor  plagiari-like  from  others  glean,"  etc. 

It  is  manifest  that  he  had  got  beyond  his  depth,  and 
was  talking  of  a  matter  about  which  he  knew  noth- 
ing. The  fact  is,  that  the  author  or  authors  of  the 
Shakespeare  poems  and  plays  laid  all  literature,  an- 
cient and  modern,  under  contribution,  and  borrowed 
and  translated  without  end.  Digges  must  have  had 
but  a  superficial  acquaintance  with  the  plays,  not  ac- 
quired from  reading  them,  or  he  would  not  have  mixed 
up  Twelfth  Night  and  As  You  Like  It,  as  he  did  in 
these  same  verses.  As  he  was  born  in  1588,  he  was 
in  his  youth  when  Shaksper  left  London  for  Stratford. 

Forty  years  after  Heminge  and  Condell's  Preface 
appeared  these  words,  cited  by  Shakspereans  in  favor 
of  their  William: — 

"Many  were  the  wit-combats  betwixt  him  and  Ben 
Johnson,  which  two  I  behold  like  a  Spanish  great  gal- 
leon and  an  English  man-of-war;  Master  Johnson,  (like 
the  former)  was  built  far  higher  in  learning,  solid,  but 
slow  in  his  performances.  Shakespear,  with  the  Eng- 
lish man-of-war,  lesser  in  bulk,  but  lighter  in  sailing, 
could  turn  with  all  tides,  tack  about,  and  take  advan- 
tage of  all  winds,  by  the  quickness  of  his  wit  and 
invention."  Fuller,  Hist,  of  the  Worthies  of  Eng- 
land, II,  114.  This  is  often  made  to  read,  "I  beheld", 
as  something  Fuller  was  a  personal  witness  to.  Fuller 
was  but  eight  years  old  when  Shaksper  died,  and  but 
two,  when  the  player-manager  quitted  London.  But 
the  word  in  Fuller  is  "behold",  which  Knight  says 
means  "with  his  mind's  eye."  Morgan  says,  "a  fancy 


362  SHAKSPER   NOT 

sketch  of  what  Fuller  thought  likely  to  have  oc- 
curred." 

As  to  the  "Mermaid,"  Raleigh  founded  that  Club, 
and  he  and  other  gentlemen  wits  were  in  the  habit  of 
meeting  there.  We  read  of  Beaumont,  Fletcher,  Jon- 
son,  Selden,  Donne,  Carew  and  others,  but  not  of 
Shakespeare,  nor  Shaksper;  nor  is  there  any  evidence 
of,  or  probability  of,  William  Shaksper  having  had 
entrance  to  the  Mermaid.  His  despised  profession 
would  have  cut  him  off  from  that  companionship.  As 
well  might  a  tumbler,  or  Savoyard  bear-ward,  seek  ad- 
mission to  the  Manhattan  Club.  "No  matter  how 
cleanly  the  lives  of  players  might  be",  says  Dr.  In- 
gleby,  "they  were  regarded  sans  aveu  as  runaways 
and  vagrants";  and  Phillipps  says  (I,  193)  that  they 
were  then  "regarded  in  about  the  same  light  with 
jugglers  and  buffoons." 

Beyond  this  there  is  nothing  from  that  age  to  con- 
nect William  Shaksper  the  player  with  Shakespeare 
the  poet.  The  Shakespeare  critics  quote  Milton  as 
a  witness  for  Shaksper.  I  have  spoken  of  this  in 
Chapter  X. 

Milton  was  but  seven  years  old  when  player  Shak- 
sper died.  His  mention  of  the  poet  Shakespeare  in 
connection  with  the  tomb  of  the  player  merely  shows 
that  in  his  time,  or  after  the  publication  of  the  Folio, 
the  plays  were  beginning  to  be  attributed  to  the 
Stratford  man;  not  at  all  that  they  were  written  by 
him.  Milton  never  saw  one  of  these  plays  acted,  or 
the  inside  of  a  London  theater;  all  his  knowledge  of 
Shakespeare  came  from  reading  the  Folio.  Milton's 


HKMINGS   AND   CONDEU,.  363 

pretty  verses,  therefore,  are  evidence  of  nothing  but 
his  own  imaginative  faculty. 

Lee,  327,  makes  much  of  the  lines  by  I.  M.  S.,  an 
unknown  writer,  contributed  to  the  Second  Folio  of 
1632,  and  calls  it  a  splendid  eulogy.  Ingleby  con- 
jectures that  the  initial  letters  stand  for  In  Memoriam 
Scriptoris.  The  opening  lines  declare  Shakespeare's 
freehold  to  have  been  (Ing.  191): 

"A  mind  reflecting  ages  past,  whose  clear 
And  equal  surface  can  make  things  appear 
Distant  a  thousand  years,  and  represent 
Them  in  their  lively  colours  just  extent." 

It  was  his  faculty, 

'  'To  outrun  hasty  time,  retrieve  the  fates, 
Roll  back  the  heavens,  blow  ope  the  iron  gates 
Of  death  and  L,ethe,  where  (confused)  lie 
Great  Heaps  of  ruinous  mortality"  (etc.,  through  two 
pages). 

This  is  to  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays;  not 
a  hint  in  the  lines  of  the  player  Shaksper,  or  that  I. 
M.  S.  personally  knew  either  the  author  or  the  player. 
Whoever  wrote  this  effusion  got  his  ideas  of  *  'Shake- 
speare" by  reading  the  Folio. 

The  secret  of  the  authorship  has  been  well  kept,  and 
to  this  day  there  is  no  direct  proof  as  to  who  the  real 
author  was.  The  Plays  exist  to  demonstrate  that  there 
did  live  one  man  or  several,  who,  singly,  or  unitedly, 
were  equal  to  their  composition;  but  that  man  could 
not  have  been  William  Shaksper,  to  whom  under  the 
stolen  name  of  Shakespeare  they  have  been  credited 
for  centuries.  Undisputed  possession  during  any  length 


364  SHAKSPKR    NOT  SHAKKSPKARK. 

of  time  is  not  entitled  to  respect,  if  the  conditions  in- 
volve impossibilities.  To  the  time  of  Galileo,  the  whole 
civilized  world  believed  that  the  earth  circled  around 
the  sun  every  twenty-four  hours,  and  it  is  only  in  our 
day  that  the  story  of  William  Tell  and  the  apple  has 
been  relegated  to  the  limbo  of  myths.  ' '  Our  fore- 
fathers were  quite  confident  about  the  existence  of 
Romulus  and  Remus,  of  King  Arthur,  and  of  Hengist 
and  Horsa." 

William  Shaksper,  the  player,  is  never  reported  to 
have  been  seen  with  a  book  in  his  hand,  or  as  having 
owned  or  read  one,  nor  as  seen  writing  poems,  or 
plays;  or  as  having  talked  about  such  works;  or  as 
engaged  in  literary  occupation  of  any  description.  As 
I  show  in  Chapter  XV,  the  probability  that  he  could 
write  with  his  own  hand  is  exceedingly  small.  He 
simply  kept  his  mouth  shut,  and  by  a  fine  irony,  the 
world  has  for  three  hundred  years  accepted  him  as  its 
greatest  poet.  Twenty-five  hundred  years  ago,  one 
said:  "Even  a  fool  when  he  holdeth  his  peace,  is 
counted  wise;  and  he  that  shutteth  his  lips  is  esteemed 
a  man  of  understanding. ' ' 


THE   SONNETS.  365 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE  SONNETS. 

In  1609,  a  book  appeared  bearing  the  title  "Shake- 
speare's Sonnets. — Never  before  imprinted. — At  I^n- 
don,  by  G.  Eld  for  T.  T.,  and  are  to  be  sold  by  John 
Wright  dwelling  at  Christ  Church  Gate,  1609."  T. 
T.  stood  for  one  Thomas  Thorpe,  whom  Mr.  L,ee 
makes  out  to  have  been  a  publisher's  jackall.  Thorpe 
dedicated  the  book  "To  the  only  Begetter  of  these  is- 
suing Sonnets,  Mr.  W.  H.,  all  Happiness  and  that 
Eternity  promised  by  our  ever-living  poet,  wisheth 
the  well-wishing  Adventure  in  setting  forth. — T.  T." 

Who  wrote  the  Sonnets  no  one  knew  in  1 609,  for  to  say 
they  were  "  Shake -speare's"  Sonnets  was  equivalent  to 
saying  that  they  were  by  an  unknown  writer.  It  is 
not  known  to  this  day  who  wrote  them,  nor  to  whom 
they  were  dedicated.  They  have  been  attributed  to 
Sidney,  to  Leicester,  to  Raleigh,  to  Francis  and  Anthony 
Bacon,  to  the  unknown  "Shakespeare"  of  the  plays, 
and  to  the  Stratford  William  Shaksper.  It  was  an  age 
of  sonnetteering.  In  1591,  Sidney's  sonnets  entitled 
"Astrophel  and  Stella"  were  published,  and  "for  the 
half  dozen  years  following,  the  writing  of  sonnets  en- 
gaged more  literary  activity  in  this  country  than  at 
any  period  here  or  elsewhere.  Between  1591  and  1597 
no  aspirant  to  poetic  fame  failed  to  seek  a  patron' s  ears 
by  a  trial  of  skill  on  the  popular  poetic  instrument. 
Lee,  83:  "It  was  not  till  the  spring  of  1593  that 


366  SHAKSPER   NOT    SHAKESPEARE. 

Shakespeare  (meaning  Shaksper)  became  a  sonnetteer 
on  an  extended  scale.  Of  the  154  Sonnets,  the  greater 
number  were,  in  all  likelihood,  composed  between  1593 
and  the  autumn  of  1594,  during  his  thirtieth  and 
thirty-first  year."  Id.  85.  (Shaksper  was  born  in 
1564.)  Of  course,  there  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence 
showing  that  this  Shaksper  ever  held  a  pen  in  hand,— 
in  fact,  there  is  strong  evidence  to  the  contrary,  but 
the  conditions  are  such  as  to  require  that  all  the 
work  done  by  "William  Shake-speare" ,  whoever  he 
was,  should  be  transferred  to  player  Shaksper,  and  so 
we  build  up  "the  bard  of  our  admiration." 

It  is  of  importance  to  fix  the  date  at  which  the  Son- 
nets were  written,  1593-4. 

Judge  Jesse  Johnson, — "Testimony  of  the  Sonnets 
as  to  the  Authorship,"  etc.  Putnams,  1899, — also 
holding  that  the  Sonnets  were  composed  when  William 
Shaksper  would  have  been  about  thirty  years  old, 
calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  by  their  own  showing 
they  were  written  by  a  man  well  past  middle  age — 
perhaps  fifty  or  sixty  years  old,  certainly  not  under 
forty — and  therefore  could  not  have  been  written  by 
the  Stratford  man. 

In  Sonnet  73,  he  speaks  of  his  period  of  life  thus:— 

That  time  of  year,  thou  mayst  in  me  behold, 
When  yellow  leaves,  or  none,  or  few,  do  hang 
Upon  the  boughs  which  shake  against  the  cold. 

In  me  thou  seest  the  twilight  of  each  day 
As  after  sunset  fadeth  in  the  west. 

In  me  thou  seest  the  glowing  of  such  fire 
That  on  the  ashes  of  his  youth  doth  lie. 


THE   SONNETS.  367 


Sonnet  62  : 


But  when  my  glass  shows  me  myself  indeed 
Seated  and  chopped  with  tann'd  antiquity. 

Sonnet  63: 

Against  my  love  shall  be  as  I  am  now 
\Vith  time's  injurious  hand  crushed  and  o'erworn; 
When  hours  have  drained  his  blood  andfilVd  his  brow, 
}\  V///  lines  and  wrinkles;  when  his  youthful  morn 
Hath  travelled  on  to  age's  sleepy  night,  etc. 

"As  clearly  as  words  can  say,  the  poet  states  that 
he  is  on  the  sunset  side  of  life,  and  indicates  that  he 
is  well  advanced  toward  its  close. ' ' 

Sonnet  38: 

Thus  vainly  thinking  that  she  thinks  me  young, 
Although  she  knows  my  days  are  past  the  best. 

And  wherefore  say  not  I  that  I  am  old? 
O,  love's  best  habit  is  in  seeming  trust, 
And  age  in  love  loves  not  to  have  years  told. 

Johnson  adds:  "These  Sonnets  seem  to  be  based  on 
actual  occurrences.  If  so,  certainly  we  may  construe 
them  literally;  and  read  literally  they  appear  to  be 
an  old  man's  lament  at  having  been  superseded  by  a 
younger  though  much  loved  rival." 

As  to  whom  the  Sonnets  were  dedicated,  "Mr.  W. 
H.",  there  has  been  great  diversity  of  opinion  among 
the  commentators,  some  holding  William,  I^ord  Her- 
bert, to  be  the  man;  others,  Walter  Raleigh,  taking 
the  first  and  last  letters  of  his  name.  But  Mr.  Lee 
knows  by  intuition  that  Shaksper  was  never  on  terms 


368  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

of  intimacy  with  Lord  Herbert,  "although  the  con- 
trary has  often  been  recklessly  assumed."  94. 

Then  he  himself  recklessly  assumes  an  intimacy  be- 
tween Shaksper  and  the  Karl  of  Southampton.  There 
is  not  merely  no  evidence  of  such  an  intimacy,  but  no 
probability  and  no  possibility  of  it.  Lee  goes  to  the 
length  of  devoting  twenty-five  pages  to  this  Earl,  and 
gives  a  full-page  cut  of  him,  that  we  may  know  what 
a  brave  friend  Shaksper  had. 

Mr.  Lee  was  preceded  in  the  Southampton  view  by 
Gerald  Massey,  "The  Secret  Drama  of  Shakspeare's 
Sonnets",  1888,  who  wrote  a  thick  quarto  volume  in 
an  effort  to  prove  that  these  sonnets  were  written  by 
William  Shaksper — in  part,  to  Southampton,  as  his 
intimate  friend;  in  part,  for  Southampton  to  his  mis- 
tress, Elizabeth  Vernon;  in  part,  for  Elizabeth  Ver- 
non  to  Lady  Rich;  in  part,  for  Southampton,  in  lament 
for  his  imprisonment  in  the  Tower;  and  twenty-seven 
of  them  "were  composed  by  Shakspeare  at  the  sug- 
gestion of  young  Will  Herbert  upon  his  infatuation 
for  the  siren,  Lady  Rich".  In  fact  Mr.  Massey  would 
make  the  Sonnets  to  be  as  much  of  a  drama  as  was 
any  one  of  the  Shakespeare  plays. 

It  is  not  a  difficult  matter  to  dispose  of  this  South- 
ampton myth.  Here  in  Massey 's  pages  are  letters 
running  from  1595  to  1605  by  the  "kindly  old  gossip" 
Rowland  White,  (published  in  full  in  the  Sydney  Me- 
moirs), recounting  everything  that  would  interest 
Southampton,  or  Essex,  or  Herbert  and  their  friends, 
and  nowhere  is  there  a  mention  of  Shaksper  or  Shake- 
speare. "Herbert  was  one  of  the  Essex  group  of 
Shakspeare's  'private  friends'  ",  230.  "Bacon  as  a 


THE   SONNETS.  369 

frequenter  of  the  theater  with  Essex  and  Southampton, 
and  other  of  the  private  friends"  (of  Shaksper)  etc., 
393.  Not  only  does  Rowland  White  fail  to  speak  of 
Shaksper,  but  in  all  the  letters  of  that  age  detailing 
the  gossip  of  the  town  as  to  the  movements  and  occu- 
pations of  these  nobles,  or  of  anybody  else,  there  is 
no  mention  of  Shaksper' s  name  as  connected  with 
Southampton — indeed,  no  mention  at  all.  So  great 
an  authority  as  Richard  Grant  White  assures  us  that 
"there  is  no  proof  whatever  that  Shaksper  was  per- 
sonally known  to  Raleigh,  Sidney,  Spenser,  Bacon, (and 
a  dozen  other  distinguished  contemporaries  named) 
or  to  any  of  less  note  among  the  statesmen,  scholars 
and  artists  of  his  day,  except  the  few  of  his  fellow- 
craftsmen^ 

The  myths  as  to  Southampton  originated  in  the  two 
dedications  prefixed  by  a  bookseller  to  the  Venus  and 
Adonis,  and  the  Lucrece;  and  to  the  apocryphal  story 
of  gossip  Rowe,  a  hundred  years  after  the  alleged 
event,  as  to  Southampton  having  presented  Shaksper 
with  a  thousand  pounds — because  without  such  an  in- 
terposition, it  was  not  easy  for  the  quid-nuncs  to  ac- 
count for  Shaksper' s  purchase  of  houses  and  lands  in 
and  about  Stratford.  Shaksper  may  have  seen  South- 
ampton through  a  telescope,  but  as  to  a  near  ap- 
proach to  such  a  luminary,  the  customs  of  that  age 
make  the  idea  preposterous. 

Mr.  W.  D.  O'Connor,  "Hamlet's  Note- Book",  Bos- 
ton, 1886,  sees  Raleigh  as  the  author  of  these  Son- 
nets— "The  allusions  of  the  writer  to  his  overweening 
pride  in  himself,  to  his  inordinate  love  of  personal 
adornment,  (Son.  125);  his  costly  apparel,  (126);  at 


370  SHAKSPKR    NOT 

another  stage,  to  his  poverty,  (37);  to  his  physical 
lameness,  (37,  69);  to  his  advanced  age  (63,  73,  138); 
to  his  drained  blood  (63);  to  his  brow,  trenched  and 
wrinkled  by  time,  to  his  deeply  tanned  complexion,  the 
ingrained  sunburn  of  the  field  and  the  voyage,  (62); 
the  references  to  the  guilt  imputed  to  himself  ( 1 1 1 )  ; 
the  public  scandal,  the  disgrace  (29);  the  brand  upon 
his  name  (m,  112);  the  reference  to  his  expectation 
of  a  bloody  death  at  the  hands  of  the  public  execu- 
tioner (174);  the  L,ion-roar  of  the  I25th  Sonnet  at  the 
'suborned  informer', — all  this  and  much  more  confirm 
the  assertion  of  Raleigh  as  the  author  of  these  strange 
and  splendid  poems. ' ' 

One  of  the  most  strenuous  defenders  of  the  Sidney 
authorship  is  Judge  John  H.  Stotsenburg,  and  in 
Baconiana  for  May,  1893,  he  gives  reasons  for  his 
faith:  "The  first  is,  that  love  is  the  chief  word  and 
argument  of  the  Sonnets.  It  is  found  in  them  more 
than  200  times.  It  is  the  word  which  tells  the  poet's 
name.  It  is  so  stated  in  Sonnet  76.  Sidney  arranged 
his  name  in  the  form  of  an  anagram.  Having 
abridged  the  name  into  Phil.  Sid. ,  he  anagrammatized 
it  into  Philisides — translated  Sid  (the  abridgment  of 
Sid-us)  into  astra,  and  retaining  the  Phil — as  derived 
from  Philidos,  loved,  he  constructed  another  pseudonym 
and  adopted  the  poetical  name  of  Astrophel,  star  of 
love,  or  love-star.  He  distinguishes  the  Lady  Rich, 
the  bright  particular  star  of  his  affections,  as  Stella. 
In  the  Sonnet  76,  he  could  truthfully  say  'that  every 
word  doth  almost  tell  my  name.' 

'  'A  second  reason  is  based  on  the  proper  interpreta- 


THE;  SONNETS.  371 

tion  of  the  yth  line  of  Son.  20,  which   has   been   a 
stumbling  block  to  all  the  commentators. 

"  'A  man  in  hue,  all  hues  in  his  controlling.'  " 

Sidney  had  two  friends,  Sir  Edward  Dyer  and 
Fulke  Greville,  and  his  love  for  them  was  passing  the 
love  of  women.  The  Sonnets  are  addressed  to  Dyer. 
The  three  friends  in  their  poems,  were  fond  of  punning 
upon  their  own  names.  So,  in  Sonnet  20,  Sidney  puns 
upon  Dyer's  name,  likening  him  to  a  dyer,  who  in  his 
business  controls  and  fixes  all  hues  and  colors. 

"Sonnets  37,  66,  no  and  125  fairly  describe  Sidney. 
He  was  poor  and  proud;  his  parents  were  always  dis- 
tressed by  poverty.  He  bore  the  canopy  (125)  as  a 
gentleman-in-waiting,  for  the  Queen  in  the  summer  of 
1578,  and  he  learned  enough  from  personal  intercourse 
with  courtiers,  male  and  female,  to  utter  the  mournful 
cry  which  is  contained  in  Son.  66.  He  could  well 
say  that  he  was  'made  lame  by  fortune's  dearest 
spite'  (38).  He  was  not  suffered  to  marry  Anne 
Cecil.  Penelope  Devereux,  whom  he  dearly  loved, 
was  given  to  a  man  whom  she  hated  and  despised. 
He  was  fond  of  spending  money,  and  withal  liberal 
and  aristocratic,  and  yet  he  could  not  get  money; 
was  greatly  in  debt,  was  in  disgrace  at  court,  was 
a  dependent  upon  Leicester;  he  had  made  himself 
'a  motley  to  the  view'  (no)." 

Son.  127  to  132  clearly  refers  to  Sidney's  mistress, 
Lady  Rich,  and  he  intimates  that  Dyer  had  supplanted 
him  in  her  affections. 

Even  Mr.  Massey  tells  us  that  Shakespeare's  Son- 
nets were  modeled  on  those  of  Sidney:  "Twenty 


372  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

years  ago  I  did  not  do  justice  to  Sidney  nor  see  how 
great  a  fostering  influence  he  had  been  to  Shakspeare; 
nor  know  how  far  their  sonnets  are  bound  up  to- 
gether. .  .  .  The  distilled  sweetness,  the  anti- 
thetic thoughts  as  well  as  expression,  the  serious  kind 
of  wit  are  at  times  pre-eminently  Shakspearean. 
.  .  .  In  this  way  L,ove's  Labour's  I^ost  is  alive 
with  Sidney. ' '  There  are  many  who  hold  with  Judge 
Stotsenburg  that  Sidney  wrote  the  "Shakespeare" 
Sonnets.  The  proposition  of  Shaksper's  authorship 
is  based  on  some  word  of  Meres,  in  1598,  in  which  he 
attributes  by  name  certain  plays  to  "Shakespeare," 
together  with  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  and  lyUcrece,  and 
"certain  sugred  sonnets  among  his  private  friends,"— 
made  so  much  of  by  Massey.  He  and  all  the  Shak- 
spereans  assume,  without  the  slightest  evidence  of  it, 
that  the  "sugred  sonnets"  spoken  of  were  the  sonnets 
afterwards  published  by  Thorpe  as  "Shakespeare's." 

Judge  Holmes  holds  that  the  Sonnets  were  the  work 
of  Francis  Bacon,  and  finds  plenty  of  corroborating 
evidence  in  the  language,  and  in  the  allusions.  The 
fact  is,  that  these  sonnets  can  be  made  to  attach  to 
many  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  and  to  every  one 
of  them  more  clearly  than  to  William  Shaksper.  They 
have  nothing  whatever  in  common  with  what  we  know 
of  or  about  him. 

Massey  argues  that  the  dedication  to  the  Venus  and 
Adonis  (published  1593)  is  a  fulfillment  of  the  in- 
tentions expressed  in  Sonnet  26;  and  hence  that  the 
first  twenty-six  sonnets  must  have  been  written  in 
1592  or  1591;  or  perhaps  earlier,  as  "Nash  offers  good 


THE  SONNETS.  373 

ground  for  thinking  that  Shakespeare  had  been  heard 
of  as  a  sonnetteer  as  early  as  1 590. ' '  Let  us  look  at 
this. 

According  to  Phillipps,  William  Shaksper  came  to 
London  in  1585,  when  twenty -one  years  old;  accord- 
ing to  R.  G.  White,  in  1586,  when  twenty-two. 
Phillipps  tells  us  that  "removed  prematurely  from 
school,  residing  with  illiterate  relations  in  a  bookless 
neighborhood,  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  when  he 
left  Stratford  he  was  not  all  but  destitute  of  polished 
accomplishments. ' '  Also  that  as  soon  as  he  found  em- 
ployment with  the  actors  he  must  have  gone  with 
them  on  their  provincial  tours,  and  thinks  that  this 
wandering  life  began  by  1587.  Mr.  White  tells  us 
that  when  young  Shaksper  left  Stratford,  "we  may  be 
sure  he  had  never  seen  half  a  dozen  books  other  than 
his  horn-book,  his  Latin  Accidence,  and  a  Bible;  that 
"probably  there  were  not  half  a  dozen  other  books 
in  all  Stratford." 

Whether  the  year  was  1585  or  1586,  Shaksper  was 
plainly  an  unlicked  and  unlettered  country  boy  when 
he  entered  London,  of  course  with  a  very  limited 
vocabulary,  and  that  of  the  barbarous  jargon  he  had 
learned  in  his  native  village. 

But,  according  to  Massey,  three  or  four  years  have 
scarcely  passed,  when  this  young  fellow,  who  all  the 
time  has  lived  amid  low  surroundings,  with  associates 
classed  as  vagabonds,  is  found  to  be  writing  sonnets 
to  one  of  the  nobles  of  the  realm,  in  terms  that  imply 
extreme  intimacy  between  the  two,  and  discovers  an 
acquaintance  with  great  ladies,  and  with  the  forms  and 
usages  of  their  class;  and  this  in  the  choicest  Ian- 


374  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

guage,  employing  a  very  extended  vocabulary.  Fur- 
thermore, the  sonnets  were  modeled  on  those  of  Sidney, 
showing  careful  and  continued  study  of  the  latter. 
The  very  statement  of  the  facts  is  enough  to  disprove 
Shaksper's  authorship  of  the  twenty-six  sonnets,  and 
these  are  the  key  to  the  remainder. 


YEARS   AND   DKATH   OF   SHAKSPER.        375 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

LAST  YEARS  AT  STRATFORD,  AND  DEATH  OF  SHAK^ 
SPER. 

Green,  "Short  History  of  England,"  427,  says: 
"His  last  dramas  (Othello,  etc.)  were  written  in  the 
midst  of  ease  and  competence,  in  the  house  in  which 
he  lived  as  a  country  gentleman  with  his  wife  and 
daughter";  speaking,  of  course,  of  Shaksper,  the  ex- 
theater  proprietor.  Mr.  Phillips,  on  the  contrary, 
gives  facts  which,  he  says,  lead  irresistibly  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  poet  abandoned  literary  occupations  a 
considerable  period  before  his  decease.  So  he  was  not 
writing  his  dramas  in  the  house  at  Stratford,  in  which 
he  lived  as  a  country  gentleman.  He  lived  there,  at 
any  rate,  as  a  most  unfortunate  country  gentleman. 
"If  truth  and  not  romance  is  to  be  invoked,  were  the 
woodbine  and  honeysuckle  within  reach  of  the  poet's 
death-bed,  their  fragrance  would  have  been  neutralized 
by  their  vicinity  to  middens,  fetid  water-courses,  mud- 
walls  and  piggeries."  H.-P.,  I,  267.  He  went  back 
to  Stratford,  "the  dirtiest  village  in  all  Britain,"  be- 
cause he  liked  the  sort  of  people  who  lived  there,  and 
the  life  they  led.  He  would  have  been  utterly  out  of 
place  in  a  genteel  or  cultivated  community.  What  his 
neighbors  thought  of  his  15,000  or  21,000  vocabulary, 
we  are  not  told.  Imagine  his  addressing  them  in  the 
language  of  Hamlet  or  Love's  Labour 's  Lost.  It  could 
not  have  astonished  them  more  had  he  set  up  a  Krupp 


376  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

gun  in  the  dooryard.  Traditions  of  the  vocabulary, 
and  the  unknown  tongue  he  had  brought  to  Stratford, 
would  certainly  have  lasted  one  hundred  years.  That, 
and  his  amazing  erudition,  did  not  discover  itself  in 
any  effort  to  educate  his  daughters,  for,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-seven,  Judith  could  not  sign  her  name.  The 
author  of  the  plays  wrote:  "Ignorance  is  the  curse  of 
God.  Knowledge  the  wings  wherewith  we  fly  to 
heaven."  But  the  player  Shaksper  allowed  his  chil- 
dren to  grow  up  in  ignorance.  His  oldest  daughter 
was  the  wife  of  a  physician,  himself  an  author  of 
medical  works,  and  after  the  death  of  her  husband  she 
was  unable  to  distinguish  between  manuscripts  in  his 
handwriting  and  those  of  other  men.* 

The  immediate  descendants  of  the  player  stood  on 
the  same  level  of  illiteracy  with  his  ancestors.  As  to 
writing  plays  in  his  retirement,  the  books  the  author 
would  have  had  to  consult  to  write  simply  the  five 
plays  mentioned  by  Green  would  have  filled  any 
room  in  his  house.  If  Green  is  correct,  at  the 
player's  death,  some  of  the  greatest  of  the  immortal 
plays  ''must  have  been  lying  about  the  house  in 
manuscript,  running  the  risk  of  illiterate  Judith  tear- 
ing them  up  to  make  curl-papers  of ' .  But  Phillipps 
assures  us  that  the  facts  which  he  has  been  con- 

*  The  conversation  here  recorded  would  appear  to  show  that 
Mrs.  Hall's  education  had  not  been  of  an  enlarged  character; 
that  books  and  manuscripts,  even  when  they  were  the  produc- 
tion of  her  own  husband,  were  not  of  much  interest  to  her. 
Were  it  otherwise,  it  would  be  difficult  to  account  for  the  per- 
tinacity with  which  she  insisted  upon  the  book  of  cases  not  be- 
ing in  the  doctor's  handwriting."  H.-P.,  I,  277. 


LAST   YEARS   AND   DEATH   OF   SHAKSPER.         377 

sidering  lead  to  the  irresistible  conclusion  that  William 
Shaksper  was  engaged  in  no  literary  work  for  a  con- 
siderable period  before  his  decease.  That  he  was  not 
is  also  evident  from  the  fact  that  at  his  death  there 
was  no  manuscript  of  a  play,  or  anything  else,  in  his 
house — not  even  a  printed  book;  and  that  he  had  no 
ownership  in  manuscripts  or  in  printed  plays. 

"It  was  the  general  opinion  in  the  convivial  days  of 
Shaksper  that  'a  quart  of  ale  is  a  dish  for  a  king.' 
So  impressed  were  nearly  all  classes  of  society  by  its 
attractions,  it  was  imbibed  wherever  it  was  found. 
.  .  .  It  would  appear  from  this  tradition  that  the 
poet,  one  summer's  morning,  set  out  from  his  native 
town  for  a  walk  over  Bardon  hill  to  the  village  of 
Bidford,  six  miles  distant,  a  place  said  to  have  been 
noted  for  its  revelry.  When  he  had  nearly  reached 
his  destination,  he  happened  to  meet  with  a  shepherd, 
and  jocosely  inquired  of  him  if  the  Bidford  Drinkers 
were  at  home.  The  rustic,  perfectly  equal  to  the 
occasion,  replied  that  the  Drinkers  were  absent,  but 
that  he  would  easily  find  the  Sippers,  and  that  the 
latter  might  perhaps  be  sufficiently  jolly  to  meet  his 
expectations.  The  anticipations  of  the  shepherd  were 
fully  realized,  and  Shaksper,  in  bending  his  way 
homeward,  late  in  the  evening,  found  an  acceptable 
interval  of  rest  under  the  branches  of  a  crab  tree 
which  was  situated  about  a  mile  from  Bidford.  .  .  , 
It  is  added  that  he  was  overtaken  with  drowsiness, 
and  that  he  did  not  renew  the  course  of  his  journey 
until  the  following  morning.  .  .  That  there  is  at 
least  some  foundation  for  the  tale  may  be  gathered 
from  the  fact  that,  as  early  as  the  year  1762,  the  tree 


378  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

then  known  as  Shaksper's  Canopy,  was  regarded  at 
Stratford-on-Avon  as  an  object  of  great  interest' ' .  H.  - 
P.,  I,  236. 

"An  amplification  of  it  (the  traditional  account)  is 
narrated  by  Jordan  in  a  manuscript  written  about  the 
year  1770:  'I  shall  not  hesitate  relating  it  as  it  was 
verbally  delivered  to  me.  Our  poet  was  extremely 
fond  of  drinking  hearty  draughts  of  English  ale,  and 
gloried  in  being  thought  a  person  of  superior  eminence 
in  that  profession,  if  I  may  be  allowed  the  phrase. 
.  .  .  Our  bard  and  his  companions  got  so  in- 
tolerably intoxicated  that  they  were  not  able  to  con- 
tend any  longer,  and  accordingly  set  out  on  their  re- 
turn to  Stratford,  but  had  not  got  above  half  a  mile 
on  the  road  ere  they  found  themselves  unable  to  pro- 
ceed any  farther,  and  were  obliged  to  lie  down  under 
a  crab-tree,  where  they  took  up  their  repose  until 
morning,"  etc.,  etc.  Id.,  II,  325. 

1  'Some  of  the  ramifications  of  the  tale  are  sufficiently 
ludicrous.  Thus  we  are  told  in  Brewer's  Description 
of  the  County  of  Warwick  that  those  who  repeat  the 
tradition  in  the  neighborhood  of  Stratford  invariably 
assert  that  the  whole  party  slept  undisturbed  from  the 
Saturday  night  till  the  following  Monday  morning, 
when  they  were  aroused  by  workmen  going  to  their 
labor."  Id.,  328.  It  is  evident  that  the  Stratfordians 
believed  the  rich  owner  of  New  Place  to  have  been 
a  confirmed  toper. 

We  have  seen  the  boy,  the  youth,  the  man  in  Lon- 
don, and  have  come  to  understand  pretty  well  what 
manner  of  individual  he  was;  this  man  "who,  after 
such  thaumaturgy,  could  go  down  to  Stratford  and 


LAST    YEARS   AND   DKATH    OF   SHAKSPER.         379 

live  there  for  years,  only  collecting  his  dividends  from 
the  Globe  theater,  lending  money  on  mortgage,  and 
leaning  over  his  gate  to  chat  and  bandy  quips  with  his 
neighbors".  Lowell,  172. 

In  his  retirement  at  Stratford,  Rowe  says,  (on  his 
own  surmise)  \vritiiig  in  1709,  nearly  one  hundred 
years  after  the  player's  death,  that  the  concluding 
period  of  Shakspere's  life  "was  spent  as  all  men  of 
good  sense  will  wish  theirs  may  be,  in  ease,  retirement, 
and  conversation  of  friends' ' ;  that  he  retained  his  lit- 
erary intimacies  to  the  end,  and  occasionally  visited 
Ivondon;  and  "was  content  with  the  fortune  his  inces- 
sant labors  had  secured."  That  is  it!  He  had  worked 
incessantly  to  make  a  fortune,  and  at  the  same  time  is 
supposed  to  have  worked  incessantly  to  gain  a  vocab- 
ulary, a  knowledge  of  the  Bible,  and  all  sorts  of  learn- 
ing. Two  bodies  cannot  be  in  the  same  place  at  the 
same  time.  Rowe  says  nothing  of  any  tradition  that 
he  was  engaged  in  writing  or  amending  plays,  or  that 
he  was  the  possessor  of  an  astounding  vocabulary. 

Finally  the  ex-player  dies  of  a  fever  contracted  by 
spending  a  night  under  a  tree,  or  on  the  road,  after  a 
big  spree.  H.-P.,  I,  261,  puts  the  case  euphemistic- 
ally thus:  "It  is  recorded  that  the  party  was  a  jovial 
one;  and  according  to  a  late,  but  apparently  genuine, 
tradition,  when  the  great  dramatist  was  returning  to 
New  Place  in  the  evening,  he  had  taken  more  than 
was  conducive  to  pedestrian  accuracy.  Shortly  after- 
wards, he  was  seized  by  the  lamentable  fever  which 
terminated  fatally,  April  23rd,  1616.  The  cause  of 
the  malady,  then  attributed  to  undue  festivity,  would 


380  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARK. 

now  be  readily  discernible  in  the  wretched  sanitary 
conditions  surrounding  his  residence. ' ' 

Shaksper's  Will  bears  date  the  25th  March,  1616, 
and  he  died  the  following  April.  The  preamble  of  the 
Will  stated  that  the  testator  was  "in  perfect  health". 
Phillipps,  I,  203,  says:  "It  is  satisfactory  to  know 
that  the  invalid's  mind  was  as  yet  unclouded,  several 
of  the  interlineations  that  were  added  on  the  occasion 
having  obviously  emanated  from  himself.  And  it  is 
not  necessary  to  follow  the  general  opinion  that  the 
signatures  betray  the  tremulous  hand  of  illness.  It 
may  be  observed  that  the  words  'by  me' ,  which,  the 
autographs  excepted,  are  the  only  ones  in  the  poet's 
handwriting  known  to  exist,  appear  to  have  been 
penned  with  ordinary  firmness. ' ' 

Per  contra,  William  Winter,  "Shakespeare's  Eng- 
land", Ed.  1896,  171,  says:  "His  handwriting  in 
the  three  signatures  to  that  paper  conspicuously  ex- 
hibit the  uncertainty  and  lassitude  of  his  shattered 
nerves."  The  fact  is,  that  the  first  signature  was 
written  in  a  sturdy  hand,  indicating  neither  feebleness 
nor  nervousness.  The  same  is  true  of  the  "Willin" 
of  the  second  signature,  and  of  the  "By  me  William", 
of  the  third.  Perhaps  the  uncertainty  discovered  con- 
sists in  the  fact  that  the  three  signatures  exhibit  three 
styles  of  writing.  Possibly  that  was  the  result  of 
shattered  nerves. 

In  the  Will,  Shaksper  disposes  of  a  great  amount 
of  real  property,  houses,  lands,  orchards,  lying  in  half 
a  dozen  towns,  and  in  London;  of  personal  property, 
money,  gold  to  buy  rings  for  several  individuals,  his 
"silver  gilt  bole"  to  Judith,  his  plate  and  jewels  and 


LAST   YEARS   AND   DKATH   OF   SHAKSPER.        381 

household  stuff,  to  Dr.  Hall  and  Susanna,  his  daughter, 
and  in  an  interlineation  gives  "unto  my  wife  my  sec- 
ond best  bed  with  the  furniture,"  there  being  no  fur- 
ther mention  of  her  in  the  instrument.  "It  is  strange 
that  she  does  not  appear  as  executrix,  that  she  had  no 
life  interest  left  her  in  house  or  furniture,  and  that  in 
the  draft  of  the  Will,  as  made  in  January,  her  name 
does  not  appear  to  have  been  mentioned  at  all.  It  is 
only  in  the  subsequent  interlineations  that  the  bequest 
appears."  Fleay,  72. 

"Shakspere's  will  was  one  of  great  particularity, 
making  little  legacies  to  nephews  and  nieces,  and 
leaving  swords  and  rings  to  friends  and  acquaintances; 
and  yet  his  wife's  name  is  omitted  from  the  docu- 
ment in  its  original  form,  and  only  appears  by  an 
afterthought,  in  an  interlineation,  as  if  his  attention 
had  been  called  to  the  omission.  The  lack  of  any 
other  bequest  than  the  furniture  of  her  chamber  is  of 
small  moment  in  comparison  with  the  slight  shown  by 
that  interlineation."  R.  G.  White. 

Lee  says,  274:  "Several  wills  of  the  period  have 
been  discovered  in  which  a  bed-stead  or  other  article 
of  household  furniture  formed  part  of  a  wife's  in- 
heritance, but  none,  except  Shakspere's,  is  forth- 
coming in  which  a  bed  forms  the  sole  bequest.  At 
the  same  time,  the  precision  with  which  Shakspere's 
will  accounts  for  and  assigns  to  other  legatees  every 
known  item  of  his  property,  refutes  the  conjecture 
that  he  had  set  aside  any  of  it  under  a  previous 
settlement  or  jointure  with  a  view  to  making  inde- 
pendent provision  for  his  wife.  Her  right  to  a 
widow's  dower — /.  e.,  to  a  third  share  in  freehold 


;S2  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

estate — was  not  subject  to  testamentary  disposition, 
but  Shakspere  had  taken  steps  to  prevent  her  from 
benefiting — at  any  rate  to  the  full  extent — by  that 

j  arrangement.  He  had  barred  her  dower  in  [ 
of  his  latest  purchase,  viz.,  the  house  at  Blackfriars. 
Such  procedure  is  pretty  conclusive  proof  that  he  had 
the  intention  of  excluding  her  from  the  enjoyment  of 
his  possessions  after  his  death."  An  agreeable  man 
to  live  with  and  be  bound  to,  truly.  I  have  before 
quoted  the  writer  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  December, 
1897,  that  Mrs.  Anne  Shakespeare  "served  as  raw 
material  to  be  worked  up  into  Imogenes  and  Rosa- 
linds— enchanting  creatures!" 

Malone  says:  "His  wife  had  not  wholly  escaped  his 
memory:  he  had  forgot  her — he  had  recollected  her — 
but  so  recollected  her  as  more  strongly  to  mark  how 
little  he  esteemed  her;  he  had  already  cut  her  off,  not 
indeed  with  a  shilling,  but  with  an  old  bed."  He  had 
married  the  widow  Whately  in  haste,  and  had  re- 
pented at  leisure.  He  ran  away  from  wife  and  babies, 
and  for  nine  years  had  deserted  them;  and  when  he 
came  to  make  his  Will,  he  forgot  that  he  had  a  wife. 
For  myself,  I  see  nothing  to  be  surprised  at  in  this 
behavior  of  William  Shaksper — it  was  thorough!}-  char- 
acteristic of  him. 

There  is  no  mention  of  library,  or  books,  or  poems, 
or  plays,  or  manuscripts,  or  any  literary  effects  what- 
ever. 

If  William  Shaksper  was  the  author  of  the  plays,  he 
was,  by  the  evidence  of  the  plays  themselves,  a  man 
of  vast  and  varied  learning,  owner  of  very  many 
books,  in  both  ancient  and  modern  languages;  and 


tAST   YEARS   AND   DEATH   OF   SHAKSPER.        383 

"he  left  behind  him,  unpublished  at  his  death,  such 
marvelous  and  mighty  works  as  the  Tempest,  Mac- 
beth, Julius  Caesar,  Coriolanus,  Timon  of  Athens, 
and  many  more;  and  while  he  carefully  bequeathed 
his  old  clothes,  and  disposed  of  his  second  best  bed,  he 
not  only  made  no  provision  for  the  publication  of  his 
works,  but  no  mention  of  either  books  or  manuscripts, 
or  book-cases,  or  writing  table,  or  anything  at  all  sug- 
gestive of  literary  labor.  What  man  capable  of  writing 
Macbeth  and  Julius  Caesar,  and  knowing  their  value 
to  mankind,  knowing  that  they  lay  in  his  house  in 
some  cabinet,  box,  or  press,  probably  in  but  one  manu- 
script copy  each,  and  that  they  might  perish  in  the 
hands  of  his  illiterate  family  and  bookless  neighbors 
— would,  while  carefully  remembering  so  much  of  the 
litter  and  refuse  of  the  world,  have  died  and  made  no 
provision  for  their  publication  ?"  Donnelly,  100. 

"Not  only  is  there  no  mention  of  his  literary  friends, 
but  an  entire  absence  of  reference  to  his  own  composi- 
tions. .  .  .  The  editors  of  the  First  Folio  speak, 
indeed,  in  a  tone  of  regret  at  his  death  having  ren- 
dered a  personal  edition  an  impossibility;  but  they 
merely  allude  to  this  as  a  matter  of  fact  and  as  a  devo- 
lution of  the  task  upon  themselves.  They  nowhere 
say,  as  they  might  naturally  have  done  had  it  been 
the  case,  that  the  poet  himself  had  meditated  such  an 
undertaking,  or  even  that  the  slightest  preparations 
for  it  had  been  made  during  the  years  of  his  retire- 
ment. .  .  .It  may  be  safely  averred  that  the  lead- 
ing facts  in  the  case,  especially  the  apathy  exhibited 
by  the  poet  in  his  days  of  leisure,  all  tend  to  the  per- 
suasion that  the  composition  of  the  immortal  dramas 


384  SHAKSP3R   NOT   SHAKESPEARK. 

was  mainly  stimulated  by  pecuniary  results  that  were 
desired  for  the  realization  of  social  and  domestic  ad- 
vantages. It  has  been  frequently  observed  that,  if 
this  view  is  accepted,  it  is  at  the  expense  of  invest- 
ing him  with  a  mean  and  sordid  disposition".  H.-P. 
I,  262.  Certainly,  this  man  was  not  the  author  of  the 
plays,  and  had  no  interest  in  them,  pecuniary  or  other. 
His  life  had  been  devoted  to  a  single  object  and  by  his 
incessant  labors  he  had  reached  it.  Where  your  treas- 
ure is,  there  will  your  heart  be  also,  and  Shaksper's 
treasure  was  not  in  literature,  but  in  nuggets. 


SIIAXSPER    NEVER   LEARNED   TO  WRITE.         385 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THAT  WILLIAM  SHAKSPBR  NEVER  LEARNED  TO 
WRITE. 

I  here  propose  to  show  that  the  best  possible  reason 
for  the  absence,  not  only  of  book  manuscripts  among 
William  Shaksper's  effects,  but  of  letters,  memoranda, 
or  any  scrap  of  his  writing  whatever,  was,  that  this 
man  never  learned  the  manual  art  of  writing. 

The  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  must  have  cov- 
ered scores  of  reams  of  paper  with  his  written  lines, 
and  have  accumulated  memoranda  innumerable.  Of 
the  other  man,  player,  and  rich  citizen  of  Stratford, 
there  are  extant  just  five  specimens  of  his  handwrit- 
ing, if  we  are  to  accept  all  that  his  devotees  claim  for 
him.  Five  times  he  is  alleged  to  have  signed  his 
name,  as  is  evidenced  by  the  existing  signatures,  and 
one  of  them  is  prefixed  by  the  two  words  "By  me." 
That  is  all  there  is  to  show  of  the  literary  work  of 
William  Shaksper.  Following  Malone's  Inquiry, 
119: — "On  the  loth  of  March,  1612-13,  Shaksper 
purchased  from  one  Henry  Walker  a  small  estate  in 
Blackfriars,  for  one  hundred  and  forty  pounds,  eighty 
of  which  he  appears  to  have  paid  down;  and  he 
mortgaged  the  premises  for  the  remainder.  In  the 
year  1768,  the  mortgage-deed,  which  was  dated  the 
nth  of  March,  but  without  doubt  executed  on  the 
same  day  as  the  deed  of  bargain  and  sale,  (like  our 


386  SHAKSPKR     NOT  SHAKESPKARK. 

modern  coney ances  of  L,ease  and  Release),  was  found 
by  Mr.  Albany  Wallis  among  the  title  deeds  of  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Featherstonaugh,  of  Oxford,  Surrey,  and 
was  presented  by  him  to  the  late  Mr.  Garrick.  From 
that  deed  the  fac-simile  above  mentioned  was  made." 
The  fac-simile  was  published  by  Malone,  in  1790,  and 
all  the  copies  of  this  signature  in  books  of  later  date 
follow  Malone,  because  the  original  deed,  shortly  after 
1790,  or  before  1796,  disappeared. 

Malone  continues:  "As  I  have  not  the  pleasure  of 
being  acquainted  with  Mrs.  Garrick,  to  whom  I  was  in- 
debted on  that  occasion,  Lord  Orford  very  obligingly 
requested  her  to  furnish  me  once  more  with  the  deed 
to  which  our  poet's  autograph  is  affixed;  but  that 
lady,  after  a  careful  search,  was  not  able  to  find  it,  it 
having  by  some  means  or  other  been  either  mislaid  or 
stolen  from  her."  (I  see  that  Mr.  Lee,  284,  says  that 
this  mortgage-deed  has  been  in  the  British  Museum 
since  1858.  When  and  where  it  was  found  he  does  not 
tell  us.) 

Malone — further: — "On  the  same  day  on  which  I 
received  this  account,  I  called  upon  Mr.  Wallis,  to 
whom  the  deeds  of  Mr.  Featherstonaugh,  after  having 
been  a  long  time  out  of  his  hands,  have  been  lately 
restored;  among  them  he  luckily  met  with  the  coun- 
terpart of  the  original  deed  of  bargain  and  sale,  made 
on  the  loth  of  March,  1612-13,  which  furnished  me 
with  our  poet's  name.  .  .  .  Mr.  Wallis  having 
obligingly  permitted  me  to  make  use  of  this  new 
autograph  of  our  poet,  a  fac-simile  of  it  will  be  found 
in  Plate  II,  No.  X." 


SHAKSPER  NEVER  LEARNED  TO  WRITE.        387 


I  here  give  a  photographic  copy  of  this  No.  X, 
taken  from  Malone's  Plate  II;  and  also  an  enlarge- 
ment of  it,  that  each  letter  and  stroke  may  be  seen 
distinctly.  (The  letter  in  the  lower  left  hand  corner 
of  this  cut,  Malone  gives  as  the  German  r,  ''much 
used  by  scriveners  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth  and 


N9X 


James",  p.  122.)  Knight,  p.  164,  says  of  this  coun- 
terpart of  the  original  deed;  that  it  was  sold  in  1841, 
at  auction,  and  was  purchased  by  the  corporation  of 
London;  in  whose  possession  it  remains  to  this  day. 
Halliwell-Phillipps  says,  I,  239:  '  'The  conveyance  deeds 
of  this  house  bear  the  date  of  March  the  loth,  1613,  but 
in  all  probability  they  were  not  executed  until  the  fol- 
lowing day,  and  at  the  same  time  that  the  mortgage  was 


388  SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

effected.  The  latter  transaction  was  completed  in  Shake- 
speare1 s  presence  on  the  eleventh.  .  .  .  The  inde- 
pendent witnesses  present  on  the  occasion  consisted  of 
Atkinson  .  .  .  and  a  person  by  the  name  of 
Overy.  ...  To  these  were  joined  the  then  usual 
official  attestors,  the  scriveners  who  drew  up  the  deeds 
and  his  assistant,*  the  latter,  one  Henry  Lawrence, 
having  the  honor  of  lending  his  seal  to  the  great  drama- 
tist, who  thus,  to  the  great  disappointment  of  posterity, 
impressed  the  wax  of  both  his  labels  with  the  initials 
H.  L.  instead  of  those  of  his  own  name." 

On  this  recital,  I  would  observe  that  Mr.  Phillipps 
takes  pains  to  tell  us  that  the  mortgage  was  completed 
in  Shaksper's  presence,  which  apparently  is  a  very 
odd  statement,  implying,  as  it  does,  that  mortgages 
were  sometimes  completed  wrhen  the  mortgagors  were 
not  present.  But  at  that  day,  "sealing  alone  was  suf- 
ficient to  authenticate  a  deed' ' ,  and  so  it  was  until  the 
reign  of  Charles  II.  Writing  was  a  rare  accomplish- 
ment. Also,  as  Mr.  Phillipps'  fac-similes  show,  signa- 
tures were  sometimes  signed  by  proxy,  by  one  of  the 
bystanders  who  was  able  to  write.  Thus,  Vol.  II,  p. 
233,  Sept.  20,  1575,  William  Wedgewood  sells  to  Ed- 
ward Willis  two  tenements  in  Stratford,  one  of  which 
was  in  the  possession  of  John  Shakesper  (sic)  yeoman." 
On  this  Mr.  Phillipps  says:  "This  indenture  was  wit- 
nessed by  John  Shakesper,  but  it  is  scarcely  necessary 
to  observe  that  the  name  is  not  an  autograph," — be- 

*  Malone,  p.  235,  tells  us  that  "those  who  are  conversant  with 
deeds  of  that  period  know  that  the  Scrivener  who  drew  them, 
and  his  servant  or  apprentice,  were  almost  always  witnesses  to 
them." 


SHAKSPKR   NEVKR   LEARNED   TO   WRITE.         389 

cause,  as  before  said,  John  could  not  write,  and  made 
his  mark.  Phillipps  gives  fac-siiniles  of  the  name  and 
the  accompanying  words  in  each  case,  "the  tenement 
of  John  Shakesper  yeoman",  and  "Wytnesse  John 
Shakesper",  (Wyth  my  hand).  Here  John  witnesses 
a  deed,  but  another  man  writes  his  name.  I  have 
copied  this  signature  in  Chap,  i  (cut  2). 

Again,  on  page  231,  we  read: — "On  12  Feby.,  1569, 
Thomas  Stringer  granted  a  lease  (of  a  certain  estate 
mentioned)  to  Alexr.  Webbe,  and  the  indenture,  as  well 
as  a  bond  of  even  date  for  the  performance  of  the  cove- 
nants, was  witnessed  amongst  others  by  John  Shaxspere, 
the  name  in  each  instance  being  in  the  handwriting  of 
the  scrivener,  and  without  a  mark."  Not  only  deeds 
and  mortgages,  but  bonds  attested  by  a  witness  whose 
name  was  signed  not  by  his  own  hand,  but  by  that  of 
another  man! 

On  p.  238,  we  read:  "At  a  meeting  of  the  corpora- 
tion held  on  5  September,  1582,  Johannes  Shaxper 
(sic)  was  present,  and  voted  for  John  Sadler,  the  suc- 
cessful candidate  for  office  of  bailiff ' ' ,  etc. ,  and  a  fac- 
simile of  John's  name,  as  written  by  the  clerk,  is  given, 
p.  236,  beautifully  done,  each  letter  distinct,  the  ter- 
minal one  being  the  German  r,  undoubtedly  making 
the  name  Shaxper,  as  Phillipps  here  renders  it.  This 
fac-simile  was  also,  before  given,  Chap.  I,  cut  4. 

Phillipps  does  not  speak  of  the  peculiar  r,  which  in 
this  instance  he  calls  r,  though  usually  he  interprets 
it  re,  and  we  would  know  nothing  of  it  except  for 
Malone,  who  not  only  says  it  is  the  German  ry  much 
in  vogue  among  the  scriveners  of  that  age,  but  gives 
a  cut  of  it,  in  the  corner  of  his  copy  of  the  Deed  sig- 


390 


SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPKARK. 


nature  No.  X,  reproduced  here  ou  page  387,  that  there 
may  be  no  mistake  as  to  which  he  means.  It  is  the 
same  letter,  as  appears  by  the  presentation  given  by 
Malone,  as  that  which  distinctly  ends  the  first  of  the  Will 


signatures,  and  the  second  signature,  following 
It  is  the  habit  of  the  Shakspereans  to  call  it  re,  so  as 
to  get  the  name  Shakspere,  for  it  would  never  do  to 
allow  the  Stratford  man's  name  to  end  in  per,  when 
the  poet's  name  ended  in  peare. 


SHAKSPKR   NEVER   LEARNED   TO  WRITE.         391 

I  now  give  cuts  of  the  counterpart  deed  and  the 
mortgage  signatures,  issued  by  the  Boston  Public  Li- 
brary, under  the  supervision  of  the  then  librarian, 
Hon.  Mellen  Chamberlain. 

No.  i  (p.  390)  is  a  copy  of  Malone's  1790  figure,  the 


mortgage;  the  other  was  taken  from  the  counterpart  of 
the  deed,  now  owned  by  the  corporation  of  London. 

No.  2  shows  the  wax  on  the  label,  stamped  with  the 
initials  of  Henry  Lawrence.  Yet  W.  Shaksper,  ex- 
showmau,  is  alleged  to  have  owned  a  signet  ring,  and 


392        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKKSPEARK. 

such  an  article  forms  part  of  the  "museum  of  doubt- 
ful relics  and  giin-cracks"  that  R.  G.  White  saw  at  the 
house  in  Henley  Street. 

The  cut  next  given  is  a  copy  of  all  the  five  signa- 
tures, taken  for  me  by  Merritt,  photographer,  Wash- 
ington, July,  1896,  from  Drake's  "Shakespeare  and 


His  Times",  London,  1817,  at  the  Congressional  Li- 
brary. The  signatures  as  given  by  Drake,  have  been 
re-copied  in  many  works  of  recent  years,  as  Burr's 
Proof,  Donnelly's  Cryptogram,  Reed's  Bacon  v.  Shake- 
speare and  others. 

Drake's  page  is  headed,  "Five  Genuine  Autographs 


SHAKSPER   NEVER   LEARNED   TO   WRITE.         393 

of  Shakespeare."  Then  follow  the  signatures,  and 
beneath,  this  explanation.  "No.  i  is  from  Shake- 
speare's Mortgage,  1612-13.  No.  2  is  from  the  Deed — 
Malone's  Plate  II,  No.  X.  No.  3  is  from  the  first  brief 
of  Shakespeare's  Will;  No.  4  is  from  the  second;  No. 
5  from  the  third  brief  of  the  Will."  Dr.  Drake  says 
that  the  second  Will  signature  is  written  Shakspe  re, 
with  a  hiatus.  On  his  fac-simile  of  this  signature — 
over  and  above  the  hiatus — appears  what  has  been 
taken  for  a  capital  E,  and  on  the  tail  of  it,  elevated  to 
the  top,  a  small  r.  Drake  explains  these  super- 
imposed characters  thus:  "The  hiatus  is  unaccounted 
for  in  the  fac-simile  given  by  Malone;  but  in  the  plate 
of  Chalmers'  Apology  (1797),  it  is  found  to  have  been 
occasioned  by  the  intrusion  of  the  word  the  of  the  pre- 
ceding line."  Drake  has  followed  Chalmers  in  his 
fac-simile,  rather  than  Malone,  and  what  appears  to 
be  E  r  turns  out  to  be  h  c,  part  of  the  word  the  of  the 
line  next  over  the  signature.  (In  I^ee's  copy  of  these 
signatures,  presently  to  be  given,  it  will  be  seen  that 
the  writer  of  this  signature  jumped  over  the  loop  of 
the  h  of  upper  line,  so  that  there  is  no  letter  between 
the  c  and  the  r. ) 

There  is  no  important  discrepancy  between  the  Deed 
and  Mortgage  signatures  as  given  by  Malone,  Drake, 
and  Harris.  I  have  copied  the  several  versions  of 
them,  in  order  that  there  may  be  no  mistake  as  to 
what  Shaksper's  name  was,  when  he  had  retired  from 
business,  and  lived  at  his  ease,  the  rich  man  of  Strat- 
ford. 

In  the  autumn  of  his  life  he  was  known  as  Shak- 
spar,  or  Shaksper,  if  these  deeds  are  worth  anything 


t> 


394  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

as  evidence.     Both  may  or  may  not  have  been  signed 

iin  the  absence  of  Shaksper,  for 
Phillipps'  assertion  that  he  was 
present  at  the  completion  of  the 
mortgage  is  merely  his  own  con- 
jecture, but  certainly  the  other 
party  to  them  accepted  the  names 
as  written  as  correct.  If  these 
signatures  are  genuine,  the  Shak- 
spereans  may  explain  how  it  was 
that  a  man,  on  twice  signing  his 
name  within  the  period  of  a  few 
minutes,  or  even  a  day,  should 
write  it  in  two  entirely  different 
hands,  and  spell  both  given 
names  and  surnames  differently. 
One  surname  is  spelled  Shak- 
spar.  When  first  written  it 
was  Shakspr,  and  the  a  was  an 
^»7  afterthought  to  make  a  proper 
^r^  syllable.  The  other  is  spelled 
^V  Shaksper.  The  W  and  m  of 
^  >^the  first  signature  are  not  like 
the  corresponding  letters  of 
William  of  the  second,  and  no 
one  letter  of  one  surname  is  like 
the  corresponding  letter  of  the 
other.  Clearly,  the  two  signa- 
tures are  not  by  the  same  hand, 
however  it  may  be  explained. 
Nevertheless,  suppose  the  signa- 
tures genuine,  as  all  Shakspe- 


SHAKSPKR   NKVKR   ^EARNED   TO  WRITE.         395 

reans  seem  to  believe,  or  wish  to  believe,  then  what 
was  this  man's  name?  In  1612,  it  certainly  was 
Shaksper,  and  by  no  means  Shakspere.  If  there  is 
an  occasion  in  life  when  exactness  is  called  for,  it  is 
in  signing  deeds  and  mortgages,  and  beyond  all  ques- 


I./o  £  J^ 


tion,  the  parties  with  whom  the  player  was  dealing,  in 
1612,  when  the  Blackfriars  lot  was  bought,  understood 
his  name  to  be  as  he  then  wrote  it,  or  had  it  written, 
Shakspar,  or  Shaksper — in  pronunciation  there  would 
be  no  difference. 

The  other  three  signatures  are  written  on  the  three 
sheets  of   Shaksper 's  Will,   which  document  is  pre- 


396  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

served  in  the  Prerogative  Office,  Doctor's  Commons, 
London. 

Malone,  "An  Inquiry",  1796,  says:  "In  the  year 
1776,  Mr.  Steevens,  in  my  presence,  traced  with  the 
utmost  accuracy  the  three  signatures  affixed  by  the 
poet  to  his  Will";  and  he  gives  copies  of  them  in  Plate 
II,  Nos.  XI,  XII,  XIII.  I  have  had  a  photographic 
copy,  natural  size,  and  another  set  enlarged,  made 
from  this  Plate  II,  and  give  them  on  pages  394 
and  395. 

I  present  also  a  cut  of  the  second  and  third  Will 
signatures,  put  forth  by  the  Boston  Public  library: 


,  , 

'         / 

On  asking  for  the  history  of  the  Boston  copy  of  the 
five  signatures,  Mr.  Putnam,  the  Librarian,  kindly 
wrote  me,  June,  1896,  as  follows:  "The  Shakespeare 
autographs  mentioned  by  you",  (the  two  of  the  deeds 
and  the  three  of  the  Will),  "are  heliotype  reproduc- 
tions of  a  lithograph  published  at  London,  in  1843,  by 
T.  Todd,  with  a  title  as  follows:  'Shakespeare's  auto- 
graphs just  published,  price  23.  The  most  correct 
copies  of  all  the  authentic  autographs  of  William 
Shakespeare;  consisting  of  the  autographs  attached  to 
the  Will  in  the  Prerogative  Office;  that  written  upon 
the  fly  leaf  of  Montaigne's  Essays  in  the  British  Mu- 


SHAKSPER   NEVER   LEARNED   TO  WRITE.         397 

seum;  the  signature  attached  to  the  original  [deed] 
purchased  for  the  city  of  London  Library);  and  the 
one  to  the  mortgage  deed  (dated)  the  following  day. 
All  most  accurately  copied  and  also  enlarged. 
By  J.  Harris.'  " 

This  means  that  the  three  Will  signatures,  and  the 
one  from  the  counterpart  deed  were  copied  from  the 
originals  by  J.  Harris.  The  signature  of  the  mort- 
gage deed  must,  however,  have  been  copied  from 
Steevens  or  Malone.  Harris'  copy  of  the  first  Will 
signature  shows  the  effect  of  time  after  1776,  when 
Steevens  made  his  tracing,  the  letters  being  abraded 
and  broken  up,  the  surname  quite  unrecognizable. 
Therefore  I  do  not  give  a  copy  of  it.  These  signatures 
are  not  only  entirely,  (in  every  letter),  unlike  the  two 
signatures  of  the  deeds,  but  are  unlike  each  other. 
The  first  one  is  not  badly  written.  The  a  is  the  Ger- 
man #,  the  terminal  r  is  also  given  in  the  German 
form. 

(I  gave  a  cut,  (4)  on  p.  12,  showing  the  name  of 
John  Shaksper  ending  with  the  German  r,  and  so  read 
by  Phillipps;  also  another,  cut  5,  of  the  same  letter 
written  hastily.) 

The  Christian  name  over  the  other  in  the  first  of 
these  signatures,  indicates  that  the  writer  was  not  ac- 
customed to  sign  his  name,  or  to  write  other  persons 
names,  as  a  business  man  invariably  did  and  does,  the 
given  name  in  line  with  the  surname. 

The  second  signature  in  both  names  is  poorly 
written;  as  Malone  saw  it,  the  letters  are  Shaksp  e, 
followed  by  a  wide  break  and  the  German  r. 

The  original  hand  that  made  the  third  signature 


398 


SHAKSP3R   NOT    SHAKKSPKARE. 


safely  reached  p,  but  what  follows  has  been  a  per- 
plexity to  the  editors.  Malone  says  that  he  concluded 
at  first  that  the  letters  were  ea  re ,  but  later,  that  what 
he  had  taken  for  an  a  was  a  superfluous  stroke  when 
the  poet  came  to  write  the  letter  r.  In  his  copy,  all 


f'r 


the  lines  here  are  light,  and  the  superfluous  stroke  he 
speaks  of  is  distinct  and  is  nothing  like  the  letter  a. 
Canceling  this  stroke,  the  name  is  left  Shaksper,  for 
the  final  letter  is  only  a  bungling  attempt  at  an  r.  In 
Lee,  the  lines  after/  are  heavier  than  in  Malone,  but 
the  superfluous  stroke  is  just  as  in  Malone.  In  the 
version  of  this  signature  on  Knight's,  page  168,  L,ife  of 


SHAKSPKR   NEVKR   IvKARNED   TO  WRITE.         399 

W.  S.  (1843),  all  the  lines  of  the  last  syllable  are 
heavy,  and  he  gets  a  very  fair  a  out  of  the  z  mark — 
a  case  of  fraud. 

I  offer  a  much  enlarged  copy  of  the  letters  a  k  sp  of 
Malone's  three  Will  signatures  in  order  to  show  how 
different  they  are,  and  how  impossible  it  is  that  one 
and  the  same  hand  wrote  them  (see  p.  398): 

On  the  following  page  I  give  a  copy  of  the  three 
Will  signatures  from  Lee's  Life  of  William  Shake- 
speare. London  and  New  York,  1898. 

By  this  it  appears  that  the  first  signature  is  worn 
but.  It  is  in  much  worse  condition  than  when  Harris 
saw  it.  For  a  copy  of  this  signature  we  have,  there- 
fore, to  go  to  Malone.  As  Mr.  Lee  has  photographed 
the  lower  line  of  the  second  sheet  of  the  Will,  it  is 
seen  how  the  hiatus  in  the  surname  of  the  second 
signature  came  to  be.  The  loop  was  jumped,  and 
there  is  no  character  between  the  e  and  the  final  r. 
This  last  letter  is  the  German  r,  identical  with  the  r 
shown  in  Malone's  Fig.  X,  and  also  in  the  r  copied 
from  Woodberry,  before  given  in  Chap.  I.,  -<2^<_- 

This  is  the  letter  that  ends  the  first  and  second  Will 
signatures,  and  in  all  three  of  them  the  name  is  Shak- 
sper — nothing  else. 

There  is  no  discrepancy  between  the  letters  of  the 
third  signature  in  Malone  and  Lee,  except  that  the 
flourish  to  the  r  ends  in  a  fork  in  Lee  (so  in  Harris), 
but  not  in  Malone. 

The  three  signatures  to  the  Will  were  no  doubt 
made  almost  simultaneously,  say  within  a  period  of 
ten  or  fifteen  minutes.  The  second  and  third  a  are 
least  unlike,  but  they  were  made  by  different  hands; 


400 


SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 


% 

4 
^'* 


SHAKSPKR   NEVER   LEARNED   TO   WRITE.         401 

and  they  are  both  of  different  species  from  the  German 
a  of  the  first  signature.  There  are  three  sorts  of  k, 
if  the  first  letter  so  called  be  not  an  x,  three  of  s, 
three  of  p,  and  the  second  p  is  unlike  that  letter  in 
any  known  alphabet.  (I  might  have  shown  the  final 
letter  of  these  three  signatures  which  also  discovers 
three  different  forms). 

The  third  signature  is  preceded  by  the  words  By 
me,  and  these,  and  the  William,  are  well  written,  and 
by  a  different  hand  from  the  one  that  wrote  the  sur- 
mame  following,  and  the  one  that  wrote  the  second 
signature,  and,  again,  from  the  hand  that  wrote  the 
first. 

Of  the  five  signatures,  no  one  is  Shakspere;  the  two 
on  the  deeds  are  Shakspar  and  Shaksper;  the  first  on 
the  Will  is  Shaksper,  the  second  Shaksper,  and,  dis- 
missing Malone's  superfluous  stroke,  the  third  is 
Shaksper.  Nowhere  is  there  any  Shakespeare,  the 
name  under  which  the  plays  were  written. 

Supposing  for  a  moment  that  one  hand  could  have 
written  the  five  signatures,  what  does  it  prove? 
In  the  first — on  the  mortgage — he  writes  Wm.  for 
William;  in  the  next,  made  at  the  same  time,  he 
writes  William  at  length,  but  on  top  of  the  surname. 
Again,  in  the  first  of  the  Will  signatures,  he  writes 
William  above  the  surname.  The  next  time,  he  at- 
tempts to  get  the  names  in  line,  but  misses  it  con- 
siderably, the  given  name — now  spelled  Willin — be- 
ing raised  to  the  level  of  the  top  of  the  surname,  and, 
moreover,  it  is  separated  from  the  latter  by  a  notice- 
ably wide  space.  The  third  time  he  writes  William, 
gets  it  at  the  proper  distance  from  the  surname,  but 


402  SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

the  latter  has  tumbled,  and  is  almost  wholly  below  the 
level  of  the  given  name.  These  little  things  show 
that  the  writer  wras  not  in  the  habit  of  signing  his 
own  name,  or  accustomed  to  the  use  of  a  pen.  William 
Shaksper  accumulated  a  large  property  by  all  sorts  of 
trading,  and,  if  he  could  handle  a  pen  at  all,  must 
have  been  in  the  daily  habit  of  signing  his  name  to 
one  piece  of  paper  or  other,  bills,  notes,  receipts, 
money  orders,  contracts,  deeds,  etc.  Is  it  to  be  be- 
lieved that  a  man  who,  for  fully  twenty  years,  had 
been  in  active  business,  if  he  could  write,  never  at- 
tained a  fixed  and  recognizable  signature;  that  he 
never  wrote  his  name  in  a  straight  line;  that  in  the 
same  hour,  and  on  the  same  document,  he  would 
sign  his  name  William  and  Willin,  and  his  surname 
in  as  many  different  styles  of  letters  as  he  made 
signatures  ? 

Thos.  Greene,  lawyer,  for  years  resided  (H.-P. ) 
under  some  unknown  conditions  at  New  Place.  He 
and  other  clerks  did  what  signing  of  Shaksper's  name 
was  necessary  in  the  line  of  his  business.  The 
writer  Shakespeare,  who  penned  thousands  of  verses, 
would  have  run  them  in  straight  lines,  and  would  not 
have  signed  his  given  name  above,  or  out  of  line  with 
his  surname.  He  would  have  written  and  signed  his 
name  as  became  a  gentleman  and  a  scholar,  and  not 
like  a  Hodge,  fresh  from  the  plough.  So  the  man 
Shaksper,  as  a  business  man,  and  he  certainly  was 
that — would  have  written  as  became  a  business  man, 
in  one  uniform  style,  if  he  knew  how  to  write  at  all. 

His  signature  at  the  end  of  his  life  would  have  been 
as  in  his  middle  age,  or  in  his  youth.  It  is  so  with 


SHAKSPER   NEVER   LEARNED  TO  WRITE.        403 

every  man,  and  is  a  matter  of  course.  Men  do  not 
put  on  a  new  handwriting  once  a  week,  as  a  caterpil- 
lar puts  on  a  new  skin,  much  less  change  it  three 
times  in  one  day.  In  "Proof  that  Shaksper  could  not 
write",  by  W.  H.  Burr,  Washington,  1886,  the  au- 
thor is  of  the  opinion  that  William  Shaksper  "was 
unable  to  spell  or  write  his  name,  and  that  he  simply 
traced  a  copy  set  him  at  different  times  by  different 
persons."  But  in  that  case,  the  three  signatures 
of  the  Will,  made  one  after  the  other,  should  have 
been  essentially  alike,  following  the  same  copy. 
Every  school  boy  follows  copy,  and  could  not 
write  the  lines  unlike.  I  believe  that  the  scrivener 
and  a  bystander  wrote  the  two  deed  and  mort- 
gage signatures.  Very  likely  the  vendee  and  mort- 
gagor was  not  present  at  the  execution  of  these 
instruments.  When  it  came  to  signing  the  three 
sheets  of  the  Will;  this  is  about  what  happened;  the 
scrivener's  apprentice,  or  servant,  began  the  signing 
for  the  testator,  and  in  a  bold  hand  wrote  "William 
Shaksper".  Drake  said,  in  1817,  "It  has  been  sup- 
posed that,  according  to  the  practice  in  Shakspere's 
time  the  name  in  the  first  sheet  was  written  by  the 
scrivener  who  drew  the  Will."  This  accounts  for  the 
peculiar  a,  the  German  a,  which  both  Drake  and 
Skottowe  read  as  ac;  (Shack)  the  German  /,  the  Ger- 
man r,  and  the  peculiar  k. 

In  the  age  of  which  we  are  treating,  very  great  lati- 
tude was  allowed  in  executing  legal  papers.  Cruise, 
Digest  of  the  Law  of  Real  Property,  Title  XXXII, 
Chap.  II,  s.  63,  says:  "Sealing  alone  was  sufficient  to 
authenticate  a  deed  till  the  reign  of  King  Charles 


404  SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

II."  He  goes  on  to  say  that  it  was  of  no  consequence 
who  sealed  the  deed,  or  what  it  was  sealed  with — even 
a  stick:  "If  I  take  it  up  after  it  is  sealed,  and  deliver 
it  as  my  deed,  it  is  an  agreement  to  the  sealing,  and 
so  a  good  deed".  Phillipps  implies,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  a  mortgage  could  be  executed  in  the  absence  of 
the  mortgagor.  There  was  no  reason  at  all  why  Will- 
iam Shaksper  should  have  been  present  at  the  execu- 
tion of  either  mortgage  or  deed  if  he  did  not  care  to 
be.  His  signature  was  not  essential,  and  anybody 
could  affix  the  seals,  as  it  seems  the  scrivener's  clerk, 
Henry  Lawrence,  did.  We  have  seen  that  John 
Shaksper  appears  as  a  witness  to  a  Deed,  also  to  a 
Lease  and  Bond,  his  name  written  in  full  in  each  case, 
though  it  is  stated  positively  that  he  was  never  able  to 
write,  and  that  his  sign-manual  was  a  two-pronged 
mark.  We  are  told  by  Halli well- Phillipps,  II,  392, 
that  '  'in  those  days  there  was  so  much  laxity  in  every- 
thing connected  with  testamentary  formalities  that  in- 
convenience would  seldom  have  arisen  from  any  kind 
of  carelessness.  No  one,  except  in  subsequent  litiga- 
tion, would  ever  have  dreamt  of  asking  if  erasures  pre- 
ceded signatures,  how,  or  when  interlineations  were 
added,  if  the  witnesses  were  present  at  the  execution, 
or,  in  fact,  any  questions  at  all.  The  officials  thought 
nothing  of  admitting  to  probate  a  mere  copy  of  a  Will 
that  was  destitute  of  the  signatures  both  of  testator 
and  witnesses." 

Also  Drake  assures  us  that  on  signing  a  Will,  the 
first  sheet  was  usually  subscribed  in  the  name  of  the 
testator  by  the  scrivener  who  wrote  the  Will.  We  may 
understand,  therefore,  that  it  made  no  difference  to 


SHAKSPER   NEVER    LEARNED   TO   WRITE.         405 

anybody  concerned  whether  the  testator  put  his  hand 
to  the  Will  or  not. 

The  given  name  of  the  second  signature  begins  with 
a  German  capital  Wt  and  is  written  in  a  firm,  strong 
hand,  very  different  from  the  tremulous  hand  which 
traced  the  letters  5*  h  a  k  sp  of  the  surname.  I  think 
the  hand  that  wrote  the  Willin, wrote  the  final  letter 
of  the  surname.  Willin  was  then  a  familiar  form  of 
William,  just  as  Bill  or  Billy  is  now.  A  man  signing 
his  Will  would  not  make  one  of  the  three  signatures  a 
nickname.  One  of  the  neighbors  certainly  wrote  the 
Willin,  and  probably  the  hand  of  the  testator  was 
guided  into  Shaksp,  and  then  stopped,  the  friend  add- 
ing the  er.  If  the  whole  name  had  been  written  by 
the  same  man,  the  surname  would  have  been  written 
in  a  strong  hand,  and  would  not  have  been  at  an  un- 
reasonable distance  from  the  other,  and  below  it. 

Finally,  some  one  who  wrote  a  comparatively  neat 
hand  wrote  the  "By  me  William"  of  the  third  signa- 
ture, and  then  helped  the  testator's  fingers  to  develop 
the  Shaksper,  making  a  break  after  the  p — in  fact,  the 
pen  escaped  control,  as  appears  by  the  long  tail  to  the 


unformed  e.  When  recovered,  it  made  the  "superflu- 
ous stroke' '  spoken  of  by  Malone  to  start  the  pen  and 
added  er.  This  final  er  is  of  the  same  sort  that  ends 
John  Shaksper 's  name  in  the  cut  here  given,  repro- 
duced from  p.  12.  The  marks  in  the  third  signature 
between  the  p  and  the  er  mean  nothing. 


406        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPKARE. 

Skottowe  said,  in  1826:  "In  regard  to  the  signatures 
of  the  Will,  a  sort  of  doubt  has  been  cast  on  the  first 
and  second  by  the  suggestion  that  they  might  be  the 
handwriting  of  the  notary  employed  on  the  occasion. ' ' 
Which,  together  with  what  I  have  quoted  from  Drake, 
shows  that  generations  ago  the  editors  and  com- 
mentators were  puzzled  by  the  remarkable  discrepan- 
cies in  these  signatures. 

Drake  says:  "The  autographs  present  us  with  five 
signatures,  which,  singular  as  it  may  appear,  all  vary, 
either  in  the  mode  of  writing  or  mode  of  spelling. 
The  first  appears  Wm.  Shakspea,  the  second  William 
Shaksper.  The  three  Will  signatures,  it  is  remark- 
able, differ  considerably,  especially  in  the  surnames,  for 
in  the  first  we  have  Shackspere;  in  the  second  Shake- 
spe  re;  in  the  third  Shakspeare."  Drake  mistook  the 
German  a  of  the  first  Will  signature  for  a  c. 

My  own  opinion  is  that  William  Shaksper  never 
learned  to  write,  and  that  he  at  no  time  signed  his 
name.  In  his  walk  of  life,  the  art  of  writing  was  rarely 
attained.  His  ancestors,  in  all  their  generations,  got 
along  without  writing,  as  well  as  without  reading. 
The  Shakspers,  with  the  rest  of  the  nation  at  that  time, 
were  "yet  struggling  to  escape  from  barbarity"  as 
Dr.  Johnson  asserts,  and  during  this  same  period,  "to 
be  able  to  read  and  write  (outside  of  professed  schol- 
ars, or  men  and  women  of  high  rank)  was  an  accom- 
plishment still  valued  for  its  rarity."  As  we  have 
seen,  Mr.  Phillipps  tells  us  that  learning  to  read,  in 
Stratford,  was  a  difficult  matter,  for  the  reason  that 
there  were  few  persons  in  that  village  capable  of  teach- 
ing a  boy  his  letters.  Had  William  as  a  boy  learned 


SHAKSPKR   NEVKR   ^EARNED   TO   WRITK.         407 

to  write,  as  a  mail  he  would  have  employed  but  one 
alphabet,  and  uot  as  many  alphabets  as  he  made  sig- 
natures. Any  business  man  will  witness  that  a  cor- 
respondent of  his  who  sends  a  different  signature  with 
every  communication,  is  not  doing  his  own  writing, 
but  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  are  doing  it  for  him. 
So  it  was  with  this  Shaksper.  . 

Now,  a  curious  thing  has  happened:  the  nom-de- 
plume  of  the  author  of  the  plays  was  William  Shake- 
speare, and  no  other,  and  he  often  hyphenated  it  Shake- 
speare, as  if  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  Shak  was  no 
part  of  his  title.  The  name  of  the  player  was  Shak- 
sper and  no  other.  But  under  an  agreement  entered 
into  between  the  New  Shakspere  Society  and  the  affili- 
ated Societies  in  England  and  America,  the  names 
Shakspar  and  Shaksper  are  ignored,  while  the  name 
Shakespeare  is  banished  from  literature  and  history; 
and  recent  books  talk  of  the  poet  Shakspere.*  The 
effects,  assets,  and  the  name  of  the  great  Shake- 
speare have  been  seized  feloniously,  and  made  over  to 
the  strolling  vagabond  Shaksper,  rechristened  Shak- 
pere — a  man  unable  to  write  his  own  name!  There  is 
no  more  a  Shakespeare — the  stroller  has  possession  of 
both  name  and  plunder. 

"\Vlio  steals  my  purse  steals  trash.     .     .     . 

But  he  that  filches  from  me  my  good  name 
Robs  me  of  that  which  not  enriches  him 
But  makes  me  poor  indeed." 

I  think  the  great  "  Shakespeare"  must  have  had  a 


*I  am  glad  to  see  that  Mr.  Lee's  book  is  an  exception. 


408  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

prescience  of  the  New  Shakspere  Society  of  freeboot- 
ers, when  he  wrote  that  line. 

"These  five  signatures  are  the  sum  total  of  the  life 
labors  of  William  Shaksper  which  have  come  down  to 
us.  In  these  rude  illiterate  scrawls  we  stand  face  to 
face  with  the  Stratford  man.  What  an  abyss  sepa- 
rates them  from  the  god-like  plays!"  Donnelly,  76. 

We  have  seen  what  William  Shaksper' s  neighbors 
called  him,  and  it  would  be  desirable  to  know  what  he 
called  himself,  as  his  wealth  increased.  Apparently 
he  was  disposed  to  be  known  as  Shakespeare  about 
the  time  he  became  a  land  owner,  and  made  the  pur- 
chase of  New  Place,  or  in  1597,  though  just  before 
that,  in  the  application  for  coat-armour  of  1596,  the 
father' s  name  is  spelled  Shakespeare.  That  is  the  first 
that  is  known  of  Shakespeare  in  the  family.  In  the 
fac-simile  of  "The  exemplification  of  the  Fine  that 
was  levied  when  he  purchased  New  Place,"  H.-P., 
II,  1 06,  the  name  is  spelled  Shakespeare  several  times. 
In  the  second  application  for  coat-armour,  1699,  John's 
name  is  always  spelled  Shakespere.  In  the  Stratford 
suits  William  is  called  Shexpere,  in  1604;  and  both 
Shakespere  and  Shackspere  in  1608.  In  1606,  in  the 
conveyance  of  a  moiety  of  a  lease,  he  is  Shakspear.  In 
1612,  in  a  Bill  of  Complaint,  he  is  Shackspear;  in  the 
body  of  the  Walker  Deed  and  the  mortgage  of  1612-13, 
he  is  called  Shakespeare;  in  1614,  in  the  Articles  of 
Agreement  with  Replingham,  he  is  Shackspeare.  Al- 
though "Shakespeare"  is  in  the  body  of  the  Walker 
Deed  and  Mortgage,  when  some  of  his  neighbors 
signed  these  instruments  for  him,  they  got  the  name 
Shaksper  and  Shakspar;  and  when  his  friends  gathered 


SHAKSPER    NEVER    LEARNED   TO  WRITE.         409 

about  him  to  help  execute  his  last  Will,  they  signed 
the  name  three  times  Shaksper.  Finally,  the  Clerk 
of  Stratford  Church  entered  his  name,  at  his  burial, 
William  Shakspere,  as  Phillipps  gives  it,  but  probably 
the  name  on  the  record  really  ends  with  a  German  r 
and  is  therefore  Shaksper.  At  all  events  to  this  clerk 
he  died  Shak. 

The  ex-player  seems  to  have  sought,  when  he  began 
to  feel  his  oats,  to  slough  off  John  Peter,  but  was  not 
persistent  in  his  effort.  The  old  habits,  however,  were 
too  strong  for  his  neighbors,  and  to  them  he  was  born 
a  Shaksper,  lived  a  Shaksper,  and  died  a  Shaksper. 

Among  the  many  forgeries  relating  to  player  Shak- 
sper is  a  signature  in  an  old  copy  of  Montaigne.  Ber- 
nard Quarritch,  in  his  Rough  L,ist  No.  160,  1896,  ad- 
vertises thus  a  copy  of  the  first  edition  of  Montaigne:— 
"This  is  a  literary  monument  of  high  value,  and  the 
only  book  of  which  we  can  say  with  certainty  that  it 
formed  a  part  of  Shakespeare's  library.  His  copy, 
with  his  autograph,  is  in  the  British  Museum.  That 
he  studied  and  made  use  of  it,  we  have  sufficient  tes- 
timony," etc.,  etc. 

In  Harper's  Magazine,  October,  1894,  *s  a  story  by 
Thomas  Nelson  Page,  in  which  we  are  told:  "When 
I  read  Montaigne,  I  feel  as  if  I  was  reading  myself. 
It  is  a  pleasure  to  me  to  know  that  here  is  the  one 
book  which  we  know  absolutely  Shakspere  read,  and 
in  which  he  wTote  his  name."  This  statement  has 
been  seen  by  half  a  million  persons. 

In  Baynes,  we  should  naturally  look  to  see  this  story, 
and  on  page  94,  Shakespeare  Studies,  he  says:  "The 
only  known  volume  that  certainly  belonged  to  Shak- 


410  SHAKSPEJR   NOT   SHAKESPKARE. 

spere  and  contains  his  autograph  is  Florio's  version 
of  Montaigne's  Essays,  in  the  British  Museum."  And 
up  he  goes,  telling  us  who  that  Florio  was,  and  that 
"both  he  and  the  player  were  intimate  friends  of  the 
Karl  of  Southampton;  and  that  it  is  evident  from  the 
plays  that  William  Shakspere  was  intimately  ac- 
quainted with  Italian;  that  he  must  have  made  Florio's 
acquaintance  soon  after  he  came  to  L,ondon,  and  prob- 
ably owes  to  him  his  knowledge  of  French  as  well  as 
Italian";  that  W.  S.,  "on  reaching  L,ondon,  and  be- 
ginning to  breathe  a  literary  atmosphere"  (in  the 
sweet  air  of  the  theater  Taine  tells  us  of),  "would 
naturally  betake  himself  to  the  study  of  Italian,"  and 
so  on,  ad  astra. 

Of  this  signature,  Richard  Grant  White  says:  ' 'The 
signature  appears  upon  the  title-page  of  a  copy  of  the 
first  edition  of  Montaigne's  Essays,  published  in  1603. 
Nothing  is  known  of  the  whereabouts  of  the  volume 
previous  to  the  year  1778,  a  time  when  the  interest  in 
Shakspere  was  so  great,  and  the  investigations  of  his 
personal  history  so  recent  and  so  imperfect  that  it  was 
both  tempting  and  propitious  to  the  fabrication.  .  .  . 
Its  claims  to  authenticity  have  no  support  but  mere 
opinion,  based  upon  its  style  and  general  appearance, 
and  its  resemblance  to  originals  of  undoubted  genuine- 
ness, a  position  which  it  occupies  with  the  Felton  Por- 
trait." Vol.  I,  cxxvii.  The  Felton  Portrait  is  con- 
ceded on  all  sides  not  to  have  been  authentic. 

Again,  in  England  Without  and  Within,  page  528, 
Mr.  White  says  of  this  signature:  "Others  whose 
judgment  is  worth  mine  ten  times  over,  think,  as  I  do, 


SHAKSPER  NEVER  DARNED  TO  WRITE.      411 

that  it  is  a  forgery."     Dowden,  39,  says  of  this  sig- 
nature:    "Its  genuineness  has  been  disputed." 

Knight,  in  his  lyife  of  W.  S.,  gives  a  fac-simile  of 
this  signature,  and  I  have  had  a  photographic  copy  of 
it  made,  and  give  it  herewith: 


It  needs  but  a  glance  to  show  the  difference  be- 
tween it  and  the  five  Deed  and  Will  signatures.  The 
hand  that  wrote  this  name  could  never  have  brought 
itself  to  write  the  two  Deed  signatures,  or  the  second 
Will  signature,  or  the  surname  of  the  third  Will  sig- 
nature. Skill  in  the  art  of  writing  once  attained  can- 
not be  lost.  It  was  the  hand  of  an  expert  penman, 
no  writing  master  more  so.  Note  the  beautiful  *///», 
as  perfect  as  copper-plate;  and  the  easy  grace  with 
which  each  letter  of  the  surname  is  dashed  off.  The 
k  is  a  work  of  art,  and  so  is  the  /,  and  the  ere  are 
perfect,  as  well  as  separated.  The  forger  took  his  W 
from  the  fifth  signature,  but  got  a  very  imperfect  like- 
ness of  it;  the  illin  from  the  fourth.  The  large  5  is 
unlike  any  of  the  five,  of  a  different  species  altogether; 
the  h  k  e  r  e  unlike  any  of  the  five;  the  /  something 
like  the  letter  in  the  second  and  fifth,  differing  as  the 
work  of  an  expert  would  differ  from  a  man  unaccus- 
tomed to  write.  It  is  so  palpable  a  forgery  that  the 
wonder  is  how  any  one  gave  the  least  heed  to  it. 


412  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKKSPKARE). 

The  Ireland  forgeries,  perpetrated  near  the  close 
of  the  1 8th  century,  embraced  not  only  plays,  as  Vor- 
tigern  and  Rowena,  William  the  Conqueror,  and 
Henry  II,  but  deeds  purporting  to  have  been  made 
by  William  Shakespeare  (Shaksper),  the  forger  "im- 
itating the  poet's  signature  from  a  fac-simile  of  a  gen- 
uine deed  of  1612.  Renewed  success  encouraged  him 
to  a  perfect  hailstorm  of  Shakespeare  relics.  Verses 
and  letters  of  the  poet  inscribed  on  fly-leaves,  old 
printed  books  with  Shakespeare 's  name  on  the  title-page^ 
and  notes  and  verses  in  the  same  hand- writing  on  the 
margin,  followed  in  bewildering  succession."  Pall 
Mall  Gazette,  May,  1896.  As  the  signature  in  the 
Montaigne  first  came  to  light  in  1778,  Ireland  was  not 
the  forger.  It  was  by  a  few  years  too  early  for  him; 
but  his  forgeries  were  merely  a  sample  of  what  had 
been  done  for  years  in  this  line.  All  the  last  half  of 
that  century — or  after  the  Shakespeare  Jubilee,  1769 — 
Shakespeare  forgery  was  in  the  air.  I  find  a  curious 
item  in  Ingleby  bearing  on  this  point.  He  intimates, 
p.  410,  that  Oldys  amused  himself  in  composing  verses 
as  written  by  Shakespeare,  and  says:  "Can  it  be  pos- 
sible that  these  two  verses  were  dished  up  by  George 
Steevens  (1778),  and  assigned  by  him  to  Jonson 
and  Shakespeare,  as  a  hoax  on  his  too  credulous 
public?" 


IGNORANCE;  OF  CONTEMPORARIES.  413 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

FURTHER  EVIDENCE  OF  THE  IGNORANCE  OF  CON- 
TEMPORARIES RESPECTING  WII^IAM  SHAKSPER. 

And  so  this  man,  the  reputed  author  of  some  of  the 
greatest  works  of  intellect  the  world  has  produced, 
profoundly  learned  in  all  branches  of  knowledge,  as 
the  works  themselves  give  evidence,  disappeared,  and 
no  one  spoke  of  it,  or  missed  him.  He  passed  away 
like  a  cloud,  and  it  was  unknown  or  forgotten  what 
manner  of  man  he  was.  There  is  no  mention  of  his 
retirement  from  London  to  Stratford  in  prose  or  verse 
by  any  writer  of  the  time;  and  no  one  of  the  refer- 
ences in  Ingleby  or  Furnivall  alludes  to  William  Shak- 
sper's  death.  Is  it  credible  that  a  great  poet  could 
thus  die,  and  no  other  poet  lament  him?  Spenser 
wrote  a  dozen  elegies  and  epitaphs  on  the  death  of  his 
beloved  Astrophel;  Milton  bewails  his  friend  in  the 
magnificent  monody  of  Lycidas;  but  no  one  lifted  up 
his  voice  on  the  departure  of  William  Shaksper. 

This  man's  admirers  claim  that  Jonson  was  his 
friend,  and  that  Dray  ton  was  his  friend,  and  appeal  to 
the  traditions  that  Shaksper' s  death  was  caused  by  a 
"merrie  meeting"  of  the  three.  If  two  such  poets 
were  his  friends,  assuredly  there  must  have  been  others 
of  the  guild  who  felt  kindly  to  him,  and  knew  him  in- 
timately; yet  no  poet,  or  even  prose  writer,  uttered  a 
lament  for  William  Shaksper.  Jonson  was  a  great 
composer  of  elegies,  epigrams,  epitaphs,  and  sonnets, 


414  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

and  a  vast  collection  of  them  form  part  of  his  pub- 
lished works.  Apparently  he  wrote  verses  on  or  about 
every  man  or  woman  he  knew.  But  when  William 
Shaksper  died,  and  indeed  during  the  man's  life,  Jon- 
son  was  significantly  silent. 

Where  were  ye,  Po'ts,  when  the  remorseless  deep 
Closed  o'er  the  head  of  your  loved  Shackysper? 

Plainly,  this  man  was  known  as  a  player  and  theater- 
proprietor,  and  the  writers  of  the  day  never  thought 
of  attributing  the  plays  and  poems  which  had  been 
published  in  the  name  of  "William  Shakespeare"  to 
him. 

"Not  a  single  fact  bearing  on  his  literary  character 
has  come  down  to  us.  Emerson  says  he  examined 
with  great  care  the  entire  correspondence  of  Sir  Henry 
Wotton,  in  which  almost  every  one  of  note  in  that 
day  was  mentioned,  and  Shakespeare's  name  is  con- 
spicuously absent.  Halliwell-Phillipps  says  that  in  a 
long  series  of  letters  from  John  Chamberlain  to  Dudley 
Carleton,  scattered  over  the  whole  period  from  1598  to 
1623,  letters  full  of  the  news  of  the  month,  of  the  court, 
the  city,  the  pulpit,  the  booksellers  shops,  in  which 
court  masques  are  described  in  minute  detail,  authors, 
actors,  plot,  performance,  reception  and  all,  we  look  in 
vain  for  the  name  of  Shakespeare  or  any  of  his  plays. ' ' 
V.  R.,  in  Boston  Transcript,  6th  November,  1897. 

"Of  his  eminent  countrymen,  Raleigh,  Sidney,  Spen- 
ser, Bacon,  Cecil,  Walsingham,  Coke,  Camden,  Hooker, 
Drake,  Hobbes,  Inigo  Jones,  Herbert  of  Cherbury, 
Laud,  Pym,  Hatnpden,  Wotton  and  Donne,  may  be 
properly  reckoned  as  his  contemporaries,  and  yet  there 


IGNORANCE   OF   CONTEMPORARIES.  415 

is  no  proof  whatever  that  he  was  personally  known  to 
either  of  these  men,  or  to  any  of  less  note  among  the 
statesmen,  scholars,  and  artists  of  his  day,  except  the 
few  of  his  fellow-craftsmen,  whose  acquaintance  with 
him  has  been  heretofore  mentioned."  R.  G.  White, 
185.  "Since  the  constellation  of  great  men  who  ap- 
peared in  Greece  in  the  time  of  Pericles,  there  never 
was  any  such  society,  yet  their  genius  failed  them  to 
find  out  the  best  head  in  the  universe. "  Emerson, 
Rep.  Men. 

"As  to  Beaumont,  Fletcher,  Webster,  etc.,  who  after 
1 6 10  wrote  for  the  King's  men,  and  the  numerous  con- 
temporaries who  wrote  for  other  companies,  no  trace 
of  any  intercourse  with  Shakespeare,  personal  or  oth- 
erwise, remains  to  us,  though  abundant  guesses  and 
hypotheses  utterly  foundationless  will  be  found  in  the 
voluminous  Shakespeare  literature  already  existing." 
Fleay,  Life,  81. 

"Allusions  to  his  works  .  .  .  will  be  found 
collected  in  Dr.  Ingleby's  Centurie  of  Prayse;  but 
they  consist  almost  entirely  of  slight  references  to  his 
published  works,  and  have  no  bearing  or  importance 
on  his  career.  .  .  .  Neither  as  addressed  to  him 
by  others,  nor  to  others  by  him,  do  any  commendatory 
verses  exist  in  connection  with  any  of  his  or  other 
men's  works  published  in  his  lifetime — a  notable  fact, 
in  whatever  way  it  may  be  explained.  Nor  can  he  be 
traced  beyond  a  very  limited  circle,  although  the  fan- 
ciful might-have-beens  so  largely  indulged  in  by  his 
biographers  might  at  first  lead  us  to  an  opposite  con- 
clusion." Id.  73. 

"From  early  manhood  to  maturity,  he  lived  and  la- 


416  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

boured  and  throve,  in  the  chief  city  of  a  prosperous  and 
peaceful  country"  (a  city  of  160,000  population,  which 
is  that  of  Denver,  in  1900),  "at  a  period  of  high  in- 
tellectual and  moral  development.  His  life  was  passed 
before  the  public  in  the  days  when  the  pen  recorded 
scandal  in  the  diary,  and  when  the  press,  though  the 
daily  newspaper  did  not  exist,  teemed  with  personal- 
ity. Yet  hardly  a  word  that  he  spoke  has  reached  us, 
and  not  a  familiar  line  from  his  hand,  or  the  record  of 
one  interview  at  which  he  was  present. "  R.  G.  White, 
L,ife,  4.  Whatever  word  has  reached  us  has  to  do 
with  business  affairs,  not  literature. 

'  'There  are  few  periods,  at  which  intellectual  activ- 
ity was  as  great  as  it  is  now,  with  its  written  records 
surviving,  in  which  the  passions,  the  opinions,  the  am- 
bitions of  the  age  are  all  before  us. "  .  .  .  Such 
a  period  was  that  which  embraced  the  years  of  William 
Shaksper's  life  in  I^ondon,  and  yet  there  is  not  one 
word  of  him  or  from  him  or  about  him,  in  the  written 
records  of  that  time.  It  is  as  if  the  man  had  never 
lived. 

There  has  been  no  scrap  of  writing  from  or  to  him 
(except  one  letter,  before  spoken  of,  asking  him  for  a 
loan  of  money),  no  record  of  any  dinner  or  festival  at 
which  he  met  any  of  his  associates.  No  report  of  a 
word  spoken  by  him  on  any  occasion  or  any  subject, 
except  the  two  conversations  held  with  the  town  clerk 
of  Stratford  on  the  enclosure  of  the  common  land, 
which  I  have  given  in  Chapter  VIII.  '  'The  letters 
which  have  come  down  to  us  from  that  period  would 
fill  a  large  library,  but  in  no  one  of  them  is  there  any 
reference  to  the  actor  Shakspere.  In  the  greatest  age 


IGNORANCE  OF  CONTEMPORARIES.       417 

of  English  literature,  the  greatest  man  of  his  species 
lived  in  London  for  nearly  thirty  years,  and  no  one 
takes  any  notice  of  his  presence.  The  proposition  is 
incredible  that  a  man  should  be  able  to  produce  the 
greatest,  profoundest,  broadest  of  composition — works 
overflowing  with  evidence  of  vast  industry  and  uni- 
versal scholarship — and  yet  leave  behind  him,  apart 
from  the  writings  in  controversy,  not  a  thought,  a 
word,  a  scrap  of  writing,  a  letter,  a  fragment  of  the 
n-anuscript  of  a  play,  or  anything  else,  except  three 
signatures  to  his  Will,  and  two  to  legal  conveyances." 
Donnelly. 

Yet,  Mrs.  Dall  tells  us,  p.  182:  "It  is  certain  that 
he  was  idolized  by  the  people,  sought  by  the  nobility, 
petted  by  the  court,  and  admired  by  both  Elizabeth 
and  James.  .  .  .  Pembroke,  Rutland,  and  Mont- 
gomery, as  well  as  Southampton,  were  his  friends.  .  .  . 
Shakspere  shows  in  his  plays  that  he  sprang  from  the 
people;  he  cared  for  the  people,  their  liberties,  their 
rights,  and  their  interests.  Perhaps  he  had  at  first 
some  desire  to  take  a  practical  part  in  politics,  but  the 
death  of  Essex"  (assumed  to  be  a  friend  of  W.  S. 
also)  "made  this  impossible,  and  never  after  Essex 
died,  could  a  man  of  his  upright  dealing  and  tender 
heart  have  clasped  hands. with  Lord  Bacon.  .  .  . 
After  this"  (desertion  of  Essex  by  Bacon)  "any  in- 
timacy with  Shakspere  would  have  been  impossible". 

This  is  an  astounding  string  of  unwarranted  asser- 
tions. There  is  not  the  least  authentic  evidence  that 
he  was  known  otherwise  than  as  a  player  or  pro- 
prietor of  a  theater  to  any  person  of  distinction  what- 
ever; and  Grant  White  expressly  assures  of  that  fact. 


41 8  SHAKSPKR   NOT"   SHAKESPKARK. 

Nor  is  there  the  least  evidence  that  any  man  of  dis- 
tinction ever  spoke  to  him.  The  idea  of  player  Shak- 
sper  having  some  desire  to  take  a  practical  part  in 
politics,  and  being  deterred  by  the  death  of  that  arch 
traitor,  Essex,  is  rich.  Also,  p.  161:  "Many  things 
united  to  destroy  the  respect  of  such  a  man  as  Shak- 
spere  for  the  Queen".  Elizabeth,  whose  life  made  the 
England  of  to-day  possible — the  object  of  veneration 
to  every  right  thinking  Englishman  or  Anglo-Ameri- 
can; that  Queen  Elizabeth  of  famous  memory,  as 
Oliver  Cromwell  styled  her,  and  "that  great  Queen". 
And  this  Shaksper,  whom  Mrs.  Dall  so  belauds,  is  he 
of  the  Droeshout  likeness! 

[Per  contra,  R.  G.  White  says,  in  the  Genius  of 
Shakespeare:  "It  has  been  objected  to  the  assertion 
of  the  amplitude  of  Shakespeare's  mind,  and  to  the 
generosity  of  his  character,  that  he  always  represents 
the  laborer  and  the  artisan  in  a  degraded  position,  and 
often  makes  his  ignorance  and  uncouthness  the  butt  of 
ridicule. ' '  There  is  not  a  line  in  the  plays  which  in- 
dicates that  their  author  sprang  from  the  people  or 
cared  for  the  people,  their  rights  or  their  interests. 
As  Morgan  says:  "The  author  of  the  plays  was  a 
constitutional  aristocrat,  who  believed  in  the  estab- 
lished order  of  things,  and%  wasted  not  one  word  of 
eulogy  upon  any  human  right  in  his  day  not  absolutely 
guaranteed  by  charters  or  by  thrones."  "Coriolanus 
seems  to  have  been  written  to  create  a  wall  and  barrier 
of  public  opinion  against  the  movement  toward  popu- 
lar government  which  not  long  after  his  death  plunged 
England  into  a  long  and  bloody  civil  war.  The  whole 


IGNORANCE   OF   CONTEMPORARIES.  419 

argument  of  the  play  is  the  unfitness  of  a  mob  to 
govern  a  state."  Donnelly. 

Swinburne  says:  "With  him  the  people  risen  in  re- 
volt, for  any  just  or  unjust  cause,  is  always  the  mob, 
the  unwashed  rabble,  the  swinish  multitude. ' '  Study 
of  Shakespeare,  54. 

"Nor  have  we  found  in  going  through  these  four- 
teen comedies,  one  generous  aspiration  in  favor  of 
popular  liberty;  nor  one  expression  of  sympathy  with 
the  sufferings  of  the  poor;  nay,  hardly  one  worthy 
sentiment  accorded  to  a  character  in  humble  life." 
Wilkes,  171.] 

*  'There  is  not  even  a  line  or  word  to  show  the  con- 
nection of  William  Shaksper  writh  any  printer  or  pub- 
lisher. No  entry  of  any  description  shows  him  as 
either  paying  or  receiving  any  sum  of  money  on  ac- 
count of  works  printed".  Mrs.  Potts,  54. 

It  is  now  many  years  since  the  Diary  of  Manager 
Henslowe  (1592-1603)  was  found.  Fleay,  Hist., 
copies  a  large  part  of  it,  and  says:  "The  extreme 
importance  of  this  well-known  work  .  .  .  will, 
I  think,  justify  the  space  allotted  to  this  abstract 
of  all  that  is  of  general  utility  in  the  old  pawn- 
broking,  stage-managing,  bear-baiting  usurer's  MSS"; 
and  he  devotes  twenty  pages  to  it.  The  name  of 
nearly  every  play-wright  of  the  period  occurs,  most 
often  repeatedly,  in  these  leaves,  with  the  sums  of 
money  paid  them  for  plays  or  altering  plays.  We 
have  Jonson,  Haughton,  Monday,  Drayton,  Dekker, 
Chettle,  Wilson,  Hathaway,  Chapman,  Porter,  Day, 
Rankins,  Marston,  Boyle,  Wadeson,  Smith,  Rowley, 
Middleton,  Bird,  Hey  wood,  Webster.  But  there  is 


420  SHAKSP3R    NOT   SHAKESPKARE. 

no  mention  of  Shaksper,  or  Shakespeare,  under  any 
spelling.  To  this  day  it  remains  a  matter  for  wonder 
why  Henslowe  never  mentioned  Shaksper,  the  greatest 
play-wright  of  that  age,  if  he  wrote  the  Shakespeare 
plays,  while  he  spoke  of  all  other  men  who  wrote 
plays.  Phillipps  says  that,  up  to  1594,  '  'all  his  (Shake- 
speare's) dramas  were  written  for  Henslowe."  He 
attributes  the  selection  of  such  a  subject  as  Titus 
Andronicus  for  a  play  to  Henslowe,  influenced  by  the 
current  taste  of  the  public  for  the  horrible.  Other 
commentators,  influenced  perhaps  by  the  absence  of 
mention  of  Shakespeare  in  the  Diary,  doubt  or  deny 
that  there  was  any  connection  between  the  parties. 

"We  are  asked  to  believe  that  the  greatest  man  that 
ever  walked  this  planet — profound,  immense  in  all  his 
attributes — lived  in  this  town  of  lyondon,  and  in  the 
village  of  Stratford,  until  he  was  52  years  of  age,  and 
yet  not  a  man  comes  forward  and  says: — 'Here  is  a 
letter  from  William  Shakespere!  Here  is  where  he 
wrote  Spenser  and  discussed  poetry!  Here  is  where 
he  wrote  Bacon  and  discussed  philosophy !  Here  is  an 
account  of  a  public  meeting  in  which  he  took  part!' 
What  was  he  doing  ?  Can  you  put  such  a  light  as 
that  under  a  bushel  ?  No !  Its  effulgence  would  fill 
the  world,  and  the  activities,  the  mental  power,  of 
such  a  man  would  have  expanded  and  radiated  in  a 
thousand  directions."  Donnelly. 

In  after  years,  and  during  that  century,  antiquarians 
searched  Stratford  and  the  neighborhood  for  memories 
of  the  man.  All  that  they  could  find  I  have  related; 
that  he  was  a  wild  youth,  a  butcher's  apprentice,  got 
into  trouble  with  the  L,ucys,  and  fled  to  L,ondon;  be- 


IGNORANCE  OF  CONTEMPORARIES.       421 

came  a  player,  and  that  of  no  note  whatever;  rose  to 
be  part-proprietor  of  the  theater,  returned  to  Stratford 
a  rich  man;  and  died  of  a  fever,  the  consequence  of  a 
drunken  spree.  That  was  all.  There  was  abundant 
information  as  to  his  money  transactions,  but  not  a 
shred  as  to  any  literary  work,  or  as  to  his  authorship 
of  poems  and  plays.  Dowden  says  that  "the  facts 
which  we  possess  are  enough  to  assures  us  that  the 
greatest  of  poets  conducted  his  material  life  wisely 
and  to  a  prosperous  issue.  They  are  enough  to  prove 
his  good  sense  and  discreet  dealings  in  worldly  affairs. " 
Plenty  of  proof  indeed  as  to  material  prosperity,  but 
none  to  connect  him  with  the  Shakespeare  plays. 

"What  we  do  learn,  and  that  from  his  biographer 
and  admirer,  Halliwell-Phillipps,  is  that  he  was  a 
money-lender,  who  would  have  his  pound  of  flesh  at 
all  hazards,  and  a  keen  man  of  business,  who  kept  the 
main  chance  always  before  him."  T.  W.  White,  190. 

Malone  expressed  his  astonishment  that  "almost  a 
century  should  have  elapsed  from  the  death  of  William 
Shakspere  without  a  single  attempt  having  been  made 
to  discover  any  circumstance  wrhich  should  throw 
a  light  on  the  history  of  his  life  or  literary  career." 

Ex  nihilo  nihil fit  is  a  very  old  proverb;  the  fact  was 
there  was  nothing  respecting  the  literary  career  of 
player  Shaksper  to  be  discovered.  His  great  achieve- 
ment had  been  making  money,  and  there  was  no  limit 
to  the  gossip  and  tradition  as  to  that.  But  when  it 
came  to  literary  work,  nothing  was  found  because 
there  was  nothing  to  find.  "The  earliest  recorded 
traditions  at  present  known  are  those  imbedded  in  a 
closely  written  memorandum  book  compiled  in  the 


422  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

year  1662,  by  Rev.  John  A.  Ward,  M.A.,  of  Oxford, 
and  Vicar  of  Stratford-on-Avon.*  .  .  .  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  he  has  accurately  repeated  the  preva- 
lent local  gossip  in  the  few  entries  respecting  the  great 
dramatist."  H.-P.,  Preface,  X.  At  the  time  of  Mr. 
Ward's  writing,  some  of  the  then  residents  of  Strat- 
ford must  have  known  the  player  personally.  Prob- 
ably some  were  living  who  remembered  the  boy,  and 
certainly  there  were  many  who  knew  the  man  after  he 
came  back  to  Stratford  to  spend  the  remainder  of  his 
days  there.  Mr.  Ward  recorded  that  he  had  "heard 
that  Mr.  Shakspere  was  a  natural  wit  without  any  art 
at  all".  That  is,  without  learning  or  cultivation, 
uneducated — a  natural  genius  and  nothing  more,  and 
this  suits  William  Shaksper  exactly.  "That  he  fre- 
quented the  plays  in  all  his  younger  time,  but  in  his 
older  days  lived  at  Stratford,  and  supplied  the  stage 

*[From  New  York  Tribune,  (semi-weekly)  nth  Nov.,  1898. 
— (From  the  London  Telegraph).]  "The  wTork  of  the  i26th 
session  of  the  Medical  Society  of  London  was  begun,  at  the 
rooms  of  the  Society,  in  Chandos  St.,  by  a  short  introductory 
address  from  the  president,  Edmund  Owen,  Surgeon  to  St. 
Mary's  Hospital,  who  remarked  that  among  the  many  treasures 
of  their  library  were  fifteen  volumes  of  manuscript, '  which 
formed  the  diary  or  common-place  book  of  the  Rev.  John  Ward, 
M.A.,  Oxon,  who  was  Vicar  of  Stratford-on-Avon  from  1662  to 
1 68 1.  .  .  .  He  had  worked  diligently  to  acquire  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  medical  profession,  etc.  .  .  .  On  taking  up  his 
work  at  Stratford-on-Avon,  in  the  forty-sixth  year  after  Shak- 
sper's  death,  Ward  must,  both  as  Vicar  and  Doctor,  have 
been  told  of  many  facts  concerning  the  bard  by  those  who  had 
been  intimately  acquainted  with  him.  Unfortunately,  he  did 
not  record  much  about  him  in  these  memorandum-books;  what 
he  did  say,"  etc.  (is  what  I  have  quoted  from  H.-P.  above). 


IGNORANCE;  OF  CONTEMPORARIES.  423 

with  two  plays  every  year.  .  .  ."  He  tells  the 
story  of  Shaksper's  "merrie  meeting,  and  it  seems 
drank  too  hard",  for  he  "died  of  a  fever  there  con- 
tracted". Very  little  surely  to  have  been  gleaned  by 
a  clergyman  in  the  dead  man's  own  parish,  if  there 
had  been  anything  to  glean.  It  is  noticeable  that  Mr. 
Ward's  entry  was  made  in  1662,  the  year  he  came  to 
Stratford.  He  lived  there  eighteen  years  after  1662, 
but  never  found  more  of  Shaksper  worth  recording. 
As  to  Shaksper's  supplying  the  stage  with  two  plays 
every  year,  we  have  seen  that  Mr.  Phillipps  asserts 
that  all  the  facts  point  to  the  conclusion  that  William 
Shaksper  engaged  in  no  literary  work  after  he  retired 
from  the  stage,  which  was  in  1610-11.  Nevertheless 
Green,  in  his  History  of  England,  tells  this  story  of 
two  plays  per  year  as  if  it  were  a  fact  which  he  had 
verified. 

In  1693,  tne  R-ev-  Mr.  Dowdall  questioned  the  clerk 
of  the  parish  (of  whom  I  have  before  spoken),  a  man 
over  eighty  years  of  age,  born  before  the  death  of  the 
player.  Of  course  this  clerk,  a  man  of  intelligence 
and  respectability,  had  known  and  grown  up  with  men 
and  women  by  hundreds  who  had  personally  known 
the  player,  and  who  knew  and  could  recite  all  the  cur- 
rent gossip  about  him;  and  there  would  be  a  great 
store  of  this,  for  the  rich  man  who  went  to  London  a 
penniless  fugitive  was  the  Lord  Mayor  Whittington  over 
again.  But  all  he  could  tell  Mr.  Dowdall  was,  that 
"this  Shakspere  was  formerly  of  this  town,  bound  ap- 
prentice to  a  butcher.  But  he  ran  away  from  his 
master  to  London,  and  was  there  received  into  the 
play  house  as  a  servitour,  and  by  this  means  had  an 


424  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

opportunity  to  be  what  he  afterwards  proved."  Here 
was  a  clergyman  anxiously  questioning  the  parish  clerk 
of  Stratford,  as  to  the  knowledge  and  traditions  respect- 
ing William  Shaksper,  formerly  of  that  parish,  reputed 
to  have  written  certain  wonderful  poems  and  plays,  and 
not  one  item  does  he  extract  as  to  literary  labors,  or 
traditions  of  authorship.  Simply  that  the  runaway 
boy  came  back  a  rich  man!  Nothing  more  impresses 
the  illiterate  than  the  reputation  of  authorship.  To 
have  written  a  book  sets  all  agape.  But  neither 
clerk  nor  neighbors  had  ever  heard  of  his  writing 
plays. 

Not  one  of  the  player's  family,  it  appears,  had  any- 
thing to  say  of  poems  or  plays.  His  son-in-law,  John 
Hall,  was  a  Master  of  Arts,  and  an  eminent  physician. 
1  'His  advice  was  solicited  in  every  direction,  and  he 
was  summoned  more  than  once  to  attend  the  Earl  and 
Countess  of  Northampton,  at  Ludlow  Castle,  a  dis- 
tance of  over  forty  miles,  no  trifling  journey  over  the 
bridle  paths  of  those  days;  and  even  in  such  times  of 
fierce  religious  animosities  the  desire  to  secure  his 
advice  outweighed  them  all,"  etc.  (H.-P.,  II,  274.) 

Dr.  Hall  left  a  manuscript  entitled  "Select  observa- 
tions on  Knglish  bodies' ' ,  and  the  only  line  relating  to 
William  Shaksper  is  this:  "My  father-in-law,  W. 
Shakspeare  died  last  Thursday."  Of  this  the  Boston 
Transcript,  i3th  Oct.  1897,  sai(i: — "Dr.  Hal1  feelingly 
put  down  the  treatment  of  Goodman  Brown,  and  Gos- 
sip Wickerley,  and  the  elderly  kady  Butler,  the  herbs 
and  simples  used,  etc,  and  on  one  line,  as  if  an  after- 
thought, he  adds, ' '  the  words  given  above. 

Dr.    Nathan  Drake,   himself  a  physician,  says,  Pt. 


IGNORANCE  OF  CONTEMPORARIES.       425 

III,  Ch.  2:  "That  not  the  smallest  account  of  the  dis- 
ease which  terminated  so  valuable  a  life,  should  have 
been  transmitted  to  posterity  is  ...  singular; 
and  the  more  so,  as  our  poet  was,  no  doubt,  attended 
by  his  son-in-law,  Dr.  Hall,  who  should  have  recol- 
lected that  the  circumstances  which  led  to  the  dissolu- 
tion of  such  a  man  had  a  claim  to  preservation  and 
publicity.  Hall,  who  left  for  publication  a  manu- 
script collection  of  cases,  selected  from  not  less  than 
a  thousand  diseases,  has  omitted  the  only  one  which 
could  have  secured  to  his  work  any  permanent  interest 
of  value. ' '  The  fact  no  doubt  was  that  Dr.  Hall  was 
ashamed  of  the  tippling  old  showman  whom  the  fates 
had  assigned  to  him  for  a  father-in-law.  He  would 
have  been  a  happier  man,  could  he  have  taken  Susanna 
without  the  incumbrance.  It  is  inconceivable,  had 
Shaksper  been  known  to  the  learned  and  eminent 
physician  as  the  author  of  meritorious  poems  and 
plays — as  anything  beyond  a  mere  theater  man — that 
among  his  many  memoranda,  there  should  not  be  the 
slighest  allusion  to  his  so  near  relative.  He  evidently 
did  not  consider  Shaksper 's  life  so  valuable  as  Dr. 
Drake  held  it  to  have  been.  L,ittle  could  Dr.  Hall 
have  foreseen  that  in  the  igth  century,  this  old  man 
would  be  held  up  as  a  model  of  all  that  is  good  and 
great;  that  there  should  come  to  be  a  Shaksper  cult, 
with  its  millions  of  followers,  and  with  balloon- topped 
antiquarians  like  Phillipps  and  Furnivall,  for  hiero- 
phants. 

Shaksper 's  daughters  knew  no  more  than  the  neigh- 
bors. They  had  not  a  manuscript  or  a  letter  from 
him,  or  a  scrap  of  paper  on  which  he  had  written, 


426  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

nor  had  they  a  book  containing  a  Shakespeare  play. 
These  daughters  lived  nearly  forty  years  after 
their  father's  death — his  grand-daughter,  Lady  Bar- 
nard, till  1670, — and  there  is  not  the  slightest  evi- 
dence that  they  ever  claimed  literary  distinction  for 
William  Shaksper.  Lady  Barnard  may  be  assumed  to 
have  been  intelligent  as  well  as  educated,  and  she 
would  have  been  proud  of  her  ancestor,  if  he  was 
really  the  great  poet  Shakespeare. 

Now,  is  it  probable,  is  it  possible,  that  the  greatest 
intellect,  and  one  of  the  most  prolific  writers  of  that 
age,  lived  and  died  in  that  way;  leaving  at  the  time 
of  his  death,  in  his  own  house  at  Stratford,  nothing 
to  connect  him  with  any  literary  work,  any  author- 
ship of  books  or  plays;  his  own  children  ignorant  of 
the  existence  of  either  books  or  plays,  they  as  well  as 
the  neighbors,  knowing  him  simply  as  a  player  who 
had  run  a  theater  and  made  money?  There  is  but 
one  explanation  of  the  matter,  and  that  is  that  the 
man  Shaksper,  if  he  claimed  to  have  written  the 
Shakespeare  plays,  was  an  impostor.  He  had  no 
more  to  do  with  their  composition  than  had  Burbage 
or  Heminge,  his  fellows.  He  was  proprietor  of  a 
theater,  and  like  the  late  Barnum,  he  made  it  pay. 
He  gave  his  mind,  and  all  of  it,  to  it.  It  could  not 
have  been  otherwise.  Shaksper  must  have  done  as 
all  managers  do,  worked  early  and  late  at  his  profes- 
sion! All  the  extra  time  he  had  was  devoted  to  in- 
creasing his  heap  of  money.  Certainly  this  was  so, 
for  from  mean  beginnings,  by  small  accretions,  and  by 
lending  money  and  fortunate  speculations,  he  became 
a  very  rich  man.  Not  one  moment  had  he  for  writ- 


IGNORANCE  OF  CONTEMPORARIES.       427 

ing  plays,  and  every  presumption  is  against  his  hav- 
ing the  inclination,  any  more  than  the  ability,  to  write 
plays;  certainly  not  the  Shakespeare  plays.  Acting 
and  managing  was  one  trade,  writing  of  plays  an- 
other. 

And  yet,  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  this  busy, 
and  thriving  and  far-traveling  man,  also  undertook, 
and  for  twenty  years  carried  on  the  trade  of,  writing 
the  plays  acted  at  his  theater,  and  very  many  plays 
never  acted  there  or  elsewhere — thrown  off  in  mere 
sport,  because  he  had  not  enough  to  do,  we  may  say; 
wonderful  plays,  the  like  of  which,  for  solid  learning, 
book-lore,  philosophy — only  to  be  got  by  years  of 
continual  brain  work — the  world  has  not  seen.  And 
more  than  that,  after  many  of  these  plays  had  been 
written  and  published,  this  busy  man  re-wrote  them, 
altered,  enlarged  and  polished  them,  "with  an  eye  to 
their  literary  perfection",  Swinburne  says.  Our  ad- 
mirable Barnum,  who  belonged  to  the  same  genus  as 
William  Shaksper,  could  ride  one  horse,  possibly  two, 
but  he  hardly  could  have  ridden  half  a  dozen  without 
coming  to  grief.  No  more  could  manager  Shaksper, 
we  may  be  sure.  Nevertheless,  there  are  people  so 
constructed  that  anything  superhuman,  miraculous, 
seizes  upon  their  imagination  and  enforces  their  belief 
at  once.  They  say  with  Tertullian:  "It  is  incredible 
and  therefore  I  believe  it. ' '  Professor  Francis  W.  New- 
man, Echo,  Dec.  3ist,  1887,  says:  "Are  the  devotees 
of  Shakspere  resolved  to  make  him  a  miracle' '  ?  That 
is  exactly  what  they  do. 

The  writer  of  a  paper  on  Shaksper  in  the  Review 
of  Reviews,  July,  1894,  says:  "Any  suggestion  that 


428  SHAKSPER    NOT 

Shakspere  was  fallible  seems  to  many  of  us  akin  to 
blasphemy." 

"Nobody  believes  that  immediate  inspiration  is  pos- 
sible in  modern  times — and  yet  everybody  seems  to 
take  it  for  granted  of  this  one  man  Shakspere, ' '  Lowell. 
Surely,  because  everybody  realizes  that  on  the  theory 
of  immediate  inspiration  only,  can  this  Stratford  man 
be  brought  into  line  with  the  Shakespeare  plays.  We 
have  seen  that  Halliwell-Phillipps  intimates  his  be- 
lief that  they  were  written  "by  inspiration,  not  by 
design". 

Very  few  intelligent  men  and  women  know  the  facts 
in  this  case,  and  many  who  do  know,  refuse  to  consider 
them.  It  titillates  the  individual  and  the  national 
vanity  that  the  superhuman,  semi-divine  being,  the 
accepted  Shakespeare,  as  constructed  from  the  plays,  the 
like  of  whom  never  was  on  sea  or  land,  should  have 
been  providentially  permitted  to  the  English  race.  It 
seems  a  sacrilege  to  pull  down  one's  idol.  For  myself, 
I  am  of  the  opinion  that  when  the  author  or  authors 
of  these  works  are  discovered,  they  will  be  found,  not 
divine,  but  very  human,  with  varied  experiences,  with 
parentage,  and  education,  and  capacity,  and  training, 
to  make  such  works  possible. 

"The  only  real  argument  in  favor  of  Shaksper  is 
founded  on  what  may  be  called  the  universality  of 
belief  in  Great  Britain  and  America;  as  if  universality 
of  belief  will  consecrate  a  lie.  The  world  believes  that 
William  Shaksper  wrote  the  plays  and  poems,  and  it 
is  fashionable  and  customary  so  to  believe.  Com- 
mentators and  essayists  by  the  hundreds  have  kept 
the  gilded  idol  in  a  state  of  preservation  for  nearly 


IGNORANCE  OF  CONTEMPORARIES.      429 

three  centuries  by  ingenious  suppositions,  possibilities 
and  probabilities;*  and  when  doubters  grumbled  on 
account  of  the  paucity  of  facts,  bold  forgeries  like 
those  of  Ireland  and  Cunningham  have  been  put  upon 
the  market  to  minister  to  a  popular  mind  diseased." 
Judge  Stotsenburg,  Baconiana,  n.  s.,  p.  47. 

*  "Possibilities  and  probabilities".  I  find  a  pretty  example 
in  Dr.  Furnesses  Variorum  edition  of  the  Tempest:  "//  is 
highly  probable  that  Shakespeare  derived  his  material  from 
William  Strachey,  the  Secretary  to  the  Colony  of  Virginia. 
This  Strachey  printed  a  pamphlet  in  1612  giving  an  account  of 
'the  wracks  and  redemption  of  Sir  Thomas  Gates  Knight  upon 
and  from  the  islands  of  the  Bermudas.'  .  .  .In  recent 
times  a  closer  possible  connection  has  been  discovered  between 
this  Strachey  and  Shakespeare  than  was  known  to  M  alone. 
Prefaced  to  one  of  Strachey's  pamphlets  on  the  Colony  of  Vir- 
ginia Britanica,  dated  London,  1612,  in  a  sonnet  addressed  to 
the  'Council  of  Virgiuea',  followed  by  a  Preface  which  is  signed 
'From  my  lodging  in  the  black  Friers,  Wm.  Strachey.'  "  To 
these  facts  we  can  apply  the  universal  solvent  which  subdues 
everything  connected  with  Shakespeare's  biography,  and  say 
that  it  is  not  improbable  that  Shakespeare  and  Strachey  were 
intimate  friends  and  it  is  not  improbable  that  of  all  men  it  was 
Strachey  whom,  full  of  adventure,  of  shipwrecks,  of  tempests, 
of  travellers'  stories,  Shakespeare  "got  quietly  in  the  corner 
and  milked''1 


430  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 


CHAPTER   XVII. 

ABSENCE  OF  ALLUSIONS  TO  STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
IN  THE  SHAKESPEARE  PLAYS:  THE  AUTHOR  OR 
AUTHORS  STRANGELY  UNOBSERVANT  OF  NATURE. 

Dr.  Wallace,  in  the  "Arena",  thus  discourses:  "In 
the  midst  of  the  calm  and  beautiful  scenery  of  War- 
wickshire, he  acquired  that  extensive  knowledge  and 
love  of  nature  .  .  .  which  is  manifest  throughout 
his  works,"  etc. 

William  Winter  says:  "The  minute  knowledge  that 
Shakespeare  has  of  plants  and  flowers,  and  the  loving 
appreciation  with  which  he  describes  pastoral  scenery, 
are  explained  to  the  rambler  in  Stratford  by  all  he 
sees  and  hears."  And  again:  "The  man  who  wrote 
the  Shakespeare  plays  knew  Warwickshire  as  it  could 
only  be  known  to  a  native  of  it."  I  have  before 
quoted  Halliwell-Phillipps  on  the  flower  mentions, 
"that  they  do  not  prove  that  he  was  ever  a  botanist  or 
a  gardener.  Neither  are  his  numerous  allusions  to 
wild  flowers  and  plants,  not  one  of  which  appears  to 
be  peculiar  to  Warwickshire,  evidences."  Which 
would  seem  to  settle  that  matter.  But  it  is  a  fact  that 
the  works  of  William  Shakespeare,  supposed  to  have 
been  written  by  one  William  Shaksper,  born  in  the 
village  of  Stratford,  on  the  river  Avon,  Warwickshire, 
are  not  only  remarkable  for  the  very  opposite  of  an 
"extensive  knowledge  of  nature",  obtained  in  the 
midst  of  that  "calm  and  beautiful  scenery",  but  for 


NO    AUJJSIONS    TO    STRATFORD-ON-AVON.         431 

the  absence  of  mentions  of  or  allusions  to  Stratford, 
or  the  Avon,  or  the  county  of  Warwick,  to  whose 
beauties  he  is  supposed  to  have  owed  his  inspiration. 

In  all  the  poems  and  plays  attributed  to  "Shake- 
speare' ' ,  there  is  not  a  mention  of  Stratford,  or  of  the 
Avon.  Of  the  county  of  Warwick  there  are  just  three 
mentions: — "What  a  devil  dost  thou  in  Warwick- 
shire?" i  Henry  IV,  v,  2.  In  2  Henry  VI,  in,  2, 
Suffolk,  addressing  Warwick,  says:  "Proud  lord  of 
Warwickshire";  and  in  3  Henry  VI,  iv,  8,  Karl  War- 
wick says:  "In  Warwickshire  I  have  true-hearted 
friends."  The  action  of  the  three  Henry  VI  plays 
and  of  Richard  III  takes  place  largely  in  Warwick- 
shire, and  Earl  Warwick  is  one  of  the  prominent 
characters,  mentioned  by  name  a  hundred  times,  yet 
these  three  mentions  of  the  county  are  all  that  are  to 
be  found  in  the  thirty-six  plays,  and  not  one  of  them 
implies  a  personal  knowledge  of  the  county. 

Nor  are  other  localities  named.  It  is  possible  that 
Wincot,  in  the  Introduction  to  Marlowe's  Taming  of 
the  Shrew,  may  have  been  meant  for  Wilmecote,  a 
village  three  miles  from  Stratford-on-Avon,  but  there 
is  nothing  by  which  to  identify  it,  and  what  Wincot 
was,  no  man  can  now  tell. 

"There  is  a  Woncot  mentioned  in  2  Henry  VI, 
*  William  Visor  of  Woncot',  and  so  eager  have  the 
Shakspereans  been  to  sustain  the  Warwickshire 
origin  of  the  plays,  that  they  have  converted  this  into 
Wincot.  As,  however,  Master  Robert  Shallow  Esquire 
dwelt  in  Gloucestershire,  ('I'll  through  Gloucester- 
shire, and  there  will  I  visit  Robert  Shallow  Esquire'), 
and  William  Visor  was  one  of  his  tenants  or  under- 


432  SHAKSPER  NOT 

lings,  this  Woncot  could  not  have  been  Wincot." 
Donnelly. 

The  town  of  Coventry  is  mentioned  nine  times,  but 
nowhere  is  there  discovered  a  personal  acquaintance 
with  it:  "Towards  Coventry  we  bend  our  course"; 
"I '11  not  march  through  Coventry";  "March  amain 
towards  Coventry";  and  so  on.  The  name  Coventry 
carries  no  more  meaning  than  does  Xanadu  in  the  line 
of  Coleridge.  Any  other  name  would  have  done  as 
well. 

The  forest  of  Arden  is  spoken  of  three  times  in  As 
You  lyike  It;  "This  is  the  forest  of  Arden";  "In  the 
forest  of  Arden";  "My  uncle  in  the  forest  of  Arden"; 
but  it  is  not  an  English  forest.  It  is  a  piece  of  the 
land  of  Nowhere,  a  wilderness  furnished  with  lions 
and  green  pythons;  where  the  ruler  is  a  Duke  and  the 
courtiers  are  Frenchmen.  This  forest  has  no  more  lo- 
cality or  reality  than  the  Wonderland  of  Alice. 

William  Winter  says  that  the  man  who  wrote  the 
Shakespeare  plays  knew  Warwickshire  as  it  could 
only  have  been  known  to  a  native  of  it.  From  what 
I  have  said  above,  it  is  clear  that  this  man  did  not 
manifest  in  his  plays  any  knowledge  of  Warwickshire 
at  all. 

Drake,  Ch.  Ill,  after  speaking  of  Wincot,  dis- 
courses thus:  "It  may  indeed  excite  some  surprise 
that  we  have  not  more  allusions  of  this  nature  to  com- 
memorate; that  the  scenery  which  occurred  to  him 
early  in  life,  and  especially  at  the  period  when  the 
imagery  drawn  from  nature  must  have  been  impressed 
on  his  mind  in  a  manner  peculiarly  vivid  and  denned; 
when  he  was  free  from  care,  unshackled  by  a  family, 


NO   AIXUSIONS   TO   STRATFORD-ON-AVON.        433 

and  at  liberty  to  roam  where  fancy  led  him,  has  not 
been  delineated  in  some  portion  of  his  works,  with 
such  accuracy  as  immediately  to  designate  its  origin. 
For,  if  we  consider  the  excursive  powers  of  his 
imagination,  and  the  desultory  and  unsettled  habits 
which  tradition  has  ascribed  to  him  during  his  youth- 
ful residence  at  Stratford,  we  may  assert,  without  fear 
of  contradiction,  and  as  an  undoubted  truth,  that  his 
rambles  into  the  country,  and  for  a  poet's  purpose, 
were  both  frequent  and  extensive,  and  that  not  a 
stream,  or  wood,  or  hamlet,  within  many  miles  of  his 
native  town,  were  unvisited  by  him  at  various  times 
and  under  various  circumstances.  Yet,  if  we  can 
seldom  point  out  in  his  works  any  distinct  reference  to 
the  actual  scenery  of  Stratford  and  its  neighborhood, 
we  may  observe  that  few  of  the  remarkable  events  of 
his  own  time  appear  to  have  escaped  his  notice,"  etc. 
To  illustrate  this,  Dr.  Drake  prattles  about  an  earth- 
quake which  happened  in  1580,  alluded  to,  he  thinks, 
by  the  nurse  in  Romeo  and  Juliet.  It  is  probable  that 
the  earthquake  was  not  confined  to  Henley  street. 

Surely,  it  is  strange,  if  the  author  of  the  Plays 
spent  his  first  twenty- two  years  at  Stratford-on-Avon, 
that  no  mention  of  that  neighborhood  is  to  be  found 
in  all  his  writings,  not  merely  of  the  neighborhood, 
but  of  the  objects  that  a  boy  and  youth  with  eyes  in 
his  head  must  have  seen,  and  with  brains  must  have 
reflected  on.  I  will  quote  on  this  matter  the  writer  in 
the  London  Quarterly  Review  before  cited.  His  name 
is  not  attached  to  the  paper,  but  the  presence  of  the 
latter  in  the  Quarterly  is  a  voucher  for  his  accuracy 
and  authority.  He  tells  us  that  "Shakespeare  was 


434  SHAKSPBR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE). 

curiously  unobservant  of  animated  nature.  He 
seems  to  have  seen  very  little.  Our  authority  for  this 
is  his  own  works,  which  .  .  .  are  most  disap- 
pointing to  lovers  of  Nature  by  their  extraordi- 
nary omissions.  Stratford-on-Avon  was  enmeshed  in 
streams,  yet  he  has  not  got  a  single  king-fisher.  It  is 
true  he  refers  to  that  mythic  old  sea-bird  of  antiquity, 
the  halcyon,  but  that  is  not  a  king-fisher.  Nor  in  all 
his  streams  or  pool  is  there  an  otter,  a  water-rat,  a  fish 
rising,  a  dragon-fly,  a  moor  hen  or  a  heron.  His  boy- 
hood was  passed  among  woods,  and  yet  in  all  the 
woods  in  his  plays  there  is  neither  wood-pecker  nor 
wood-pigeon;  we  never  see  or  hear  a  squirrel  in  the 
trees,  nor  a  night- jar  hawking  over  the  bracken.  How 
is  it  that  in  all  his  sunshine  there  is  not  a  single  bee 
humming  about  the  flowers?  That  with  all  his  even- 
ings, there  is  not  a  single  moth  on  the  wing?  Shake- 
speare makes  use  of  no  fewer  than  twenty  species  of 
British  wild  animals.  Of  these,  the  badger,  the  otter 
and  the  water-rat  are  once  each  employed  by  name 
merely  as  terms  of  abuse;  the  pole-cat  and  hedge  hog 
are  also  terms  of  abuse,  but  are  so  far  described,  as  to 
be  called  respectively  'stinking'  and  'thorny';  the 
dormouse  and  ferret  are  each  used  once  as  adjectives 
for  'sleepy'  and  'fierce' ;  the  shrew  gives  its  name  to  a 
play,  but  is  never  mentioned  as  an  animal.  .  .  The 
only  references  to  the  weasel  are  blunders.  .  .  . 
There  is  not  even  a  single  epithet  in  all  his  references 
to  the  fox  that  assures  us  that  Shakespeare  ever  noticed 
one  at  large.  .  .  He  gives  a  superb  description  of 
a  boar-hunt  in  Venus  and  Adonis.  Any  one  who 
chooses  to  do  so  could  resolve  this  description  into 


NO   A^XrUSIONS  1*O   STRATFORD-ON-AVON.        435 

its  original  elements,  and  refer  them  respectively  to 
Spenser  and  Drayton,  Du  Bartas,  Chester  and  others, 
who  wrote  of  the  mighty  boar  before  Shakespeare, 
and  all  of  whom  borrowed  from  Ovid,  Pliny  and 
Virgil."  Id.,  334.  "Another  passage  of  which  much 
has  been  made  is  the  description  in  Henry  V  of  a 
bee-hive  and  its  inmates.  ...  As  poetry  it  is  a 
most  beautiful  passage;  as  a  description  of  a  hive,  it 
is  utter  nonsense,  with  an  error  of  fact  in  every  other 
line,  and  instinct  throughout  with  a  total  misconcep- 
tion of  the  great  bee-parable.  Obviously,  therefore, 
there  could  have  been  no  personal  observation.  How 
then  did  the  poet  arrive  at  the  beautiful  conception  ? 
From  the  Euphues  of  Lyly.  Was  it  original  in  L,yly  ? 
No;  for  any  one  who  will  turn  to  the  fourth  book  of 
the  Georgics  will  find  there  Virgil's  matchless  de- 
scription of  a  bee-hive;  and  if  Shakespeare  had,  in 
his  own  matchless  language,  directly  paraphrased  the 
Latin  poet's  beautiful  version,  his  description  would 
have  gained  greatly  in  accuracy,  and  lost  but  little  in 
originality."  Id.  348.. 

"His  nightingale,  again,  is  a  beautiful  poem,  but 
its  theme  is  'Philomela',  not  a  bird;  and  when  he  does 
speak  of  the  bird,  he  shows  that  he  went  to  con- 
temporary error  or  antiquated  fancy  for  his  facts,  not 
Nature.  .  .  .  Did  Shakespeare  ever  listen  to 
either  lark  or  nightingale  ?  .  .  .  The  man  Shake- 
speare never  speaks  to  us  from  the  poet's  lines  to  say 
that  the  bird  nightingale  delighted  him".  Id.  358. 
His  vocabulary  of  dog  abuse  is  positively  terrific.  It 
is  a  most  surprising  fact  that  Shakespeare  should 
never  have  a  loving  word  to  throw  at  a  dog.  If  he 


436  SHAKSPEjR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

was  ungenerous  to  a  dog,  he  must  be  called  something 
worse  to  cats.  .  .  .  It  is  surely  astonishing  that 
he  should  so  persistently  revile  the  little  animal. 
Critics  cannot  say  of  Shakspeare  that  he  was 
a  lover  of  animals."  .  .  .  "To  the  living  objects 
about  him  he  seems  to  have  been  obstinately  and  de- 
liberately purblind  and  half  deaf." 

* ' As  real  trees  that  he  knows  of,  he  actually  uses  in 
his  forests  only  the  oak,  pine  and  (very  doubtfully) 
the  sycamore.  There  are  no  elms  or  beech-trees,  no 
birch,  chestnut,  walnut,  poplar,  alder,  plane,  fir,  larch, 
lime  or  horn -beam.  Is  this  not  extraordinary  ?  .  .  . 
He  has  no  butterflies  in  his  sunshine,  no  moths  in  his 
twilight,  no  crickets  in  his  meadows,  no  bees  in  his 
flowers.  .  .  .  His  characters  live  in  Arden  Forest, 
and  yet  they  never  hear  or  see  a  single  bird,  or  insect, 
all  the  time  they  are  there.  As  for  animals,  deer  ex- 
cepted,  there  is  only  a  lioness  and  a  green  and  gilded 
snake.  The  oak  is  the  only  forest  tree  in  the  play. 
There  is  not  a  flower  in  it. ' '  Id.  360. 

Now  what  is  the  natural  inference  from  all  this  ? 
Plainly,  that  the  author  of  the  poems  and  plays  had 
not  spent  his  first  twenty  years  in  the  midst  of  the 
calm  and  beautiful  scenery  of  Warwickshire,  but  was 
town  bred,  and  got  his  natural  history  from  books. 
And  of  course  it  follows  that  boy  Shakespeare  and  boy 
Shaksper  were  different  boys. 

Mrs.  Pott  says:  "It  might  naturally  be  expected 
that  a  man  born  and  bred  in  the  country  (such  a  man 
as  William  Shakspere,  if  he  were  the  author  of  the 
poems  and  plays,)  would  have  given  some  kind  of 
description  of,  or  scene  in,  a  country  town  or  village. 


NO   ALLUSIONS   TO   STRATFORD-ON-AVON.         437 

.  a  village  green  with  rustic  dancing,  may- 
pole, etc.,  or  a  smithy,  a  country  inn,  fair,  or  market; 
but  there  are  none  of  these.  Neither  is  there  a 
harvest  home,  a  haymaking,  or  Christmas  merry- 
making, nor  any  of  the  small  pleasures  of  country 
life.  There  is  no  brewing,  cider-making,  nor  baking, 
no  fruit  or  hop-picking,  no  reaping,  gleaning  or 
threshing;  no  scene  in  a  farm  or  country  gentleman's 
house,  no  description  of  homely  occupations,  nor  of 
any  kind  of  trade.  It  might  naturally  be  expected 
that  the  father  of  a  family,  as  was  William  Shakspere, 
would  have  much  to  say  of  children;  but  these  are 
conspicuously  absent. ' ' 

But  if  the  man  who  wrote  these  plays  was  a  phi- 
losopher first  and  then  a  poet,  and  if  the  plays  "are 
not  nature,  nor  copies  of  nature,  nor  intended  to  be 
such,  but  art,  which  makes  its  own  world,  in  imitation 
no  doubt  of  nature,  but  with  an  intentional  difference 
and  under  artificial  forms  and  arbitrary  conditions," 
as  Mr.  Ruggles  asserts,  then  it  matters  nothing 
whether  lionesses  and  green  and  gilded  snakes  were 
in  the  forest  of  Arden,  or  a  sea-coast  to  Bohemia.  It 
is  a  fair  inference  that  the  artist  never  spent  his  boy- 
hood at  Stratford. 


438  SHAKSPSR    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

CHAPTER  XVIIL 

VIEWS  OF  THE  BAYNES  SCHOOL. 

Dr.  Baynes  is  obliged  to  cast  aside  all  the  traditions 
respecting  the  youth  of  Shaksper,  because  he  finds 
him  in  L,ondon,  when  but  lately  arrived  from  Strat- 
ford, learned  and  accomplished.  Hence  he  must  have 
had  superior  advantages  when  young.  But  as  the 
life  of  boy  and  man  is  a  blank,  all  the  traditions  are 
worthless,  and  the  Doctor  sets  himself  down  to  com- 
pose from  the  poems  and  plays  the  sort  of  man  their 
author  must  have  been,  "by  the  evidence  of  the  works 
themselves. ' '  In  the  first  place,  there  must  have  been 
good  birth  and  breeding,  for  undoubtedly  the  author 
was  a  gentleman.  Therefore  we  will  give  him  a  dis- 
tinguished ancestry.  The  Doctor  deems  it  more  than 
probable,  almost  certain,  that  the  name  Shakespeare 
(Dr.  Baynes  will  not  have  Shakspere — which  sounds 
too  much  like  Jacques- Pierre)  was  the  result  of 
prowess  in  the  wars  of  the  i3th  century,  (time  of 
Edward  I;  as  well  have  said  the  nth  century,  and 
bring  in  the  imaginary  ancestor  with  the  battle  of 
Hastings — one  is  as  easily  imagined  as  the  other). 
On  the  mother's  side,  he  goes  back  of  Kdward  the 
Confessor;  "a  gentlewoman  in  the  truest  sense  of  the 
term",  "the  sweetest  of  influences  in  the  boy's  child- 
hood." Now,  this  is  a  descent  something  like — 
worthy,  in  fact,  of  the  poems  and  plays.  True,  the 
facts  are  that  the  father  was  an  obscure  yeoman,  and 


VIEWS   OF   THE   BAYNES   SCHOOL.  439 

his  mother  of  the  rank  of  milkmaid — but  we  will 
have  none  of  them.  And  he  imagines  a  school  at 
Stratford  scarcely  second  to  Oxford,  a  school  that 
turned  out  young  gentlemen  with  a  greater  knowledge 
of  Latin  than  any  graduate  of  any  college  or  uni- 
versity in  America  to-day  possesses;  a  boy  Shaks- 
per  passionately  devoted  to  Ovid,  (the  Venus  and 
Adonis  proves  that);  able  to  read  for  his  own  instruc- 
tion and  delight,  Virgil,  Terence,  Plautus,  Catullus, 
and  Cicero;  but  of  the  lot,  Ovid  was  a  special  favor- 
ite with  Shaksper  at  the  outset  of  his  career;  able 
to  talk  and  write  Latin;  composes  the  Venus  and 
Adonis  in  his  youth,  and  takes  the  manuscript  in  his 
grip  when  he  goes  to  London.  A  pretty  ideal  to  con- 
struct from  the  poems  and  plays,  but  not  the  man  who 
played  at  the  Curtain  theater,  an  indifferent  actor, 
both  Hallam  and  White  say,  who  had  little  Latin,  per- 
haps none,  as  Dr.  Rolfe  ingenuously  says, — equivalent 
to  saying  he  had  no  education  at  all — and  who  died 
at  Stratford  as  devoid  of  literary  accomplishments 
as  when  he  entered  London,  and  what  they  were 
then,  both  Halliwell-Phillipps  and  Grant  White  have 
shown. 

It  is  worth  while  to  follow  Dr.  Baynes  a  little  way 
in  his  construction  of  the  personality  of  the  author 
by  citations  from  his  works,  mixed  with  a  liberal 
amount  of  spinning  from  his  own  consciousness.  He 
discourses  first  on  the  probable  curriculum  of  Strat- 
ford school  during  the  years  Shaksper  was  a  pupil 
there.  P.  149,  Shakespeare  Studies,  Longmans,  1894, 
(a reprint  of  Baynes'  various  essays  on  Shakespeare). 
I  would  repeat  here  that  as  to  the  boy  ever  having 


440        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

been  at  Stratford  grammar  school  at  all  there  is  no 
testimony  whatever.  It  is  a  supposition  at  best. 
''There  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  had  a  very  fair  educa- 
'tion".  (That  is  all  very  well — a  fair  education — when 
talking  of  Shaksper,  but  sounds  like  a  joke  when  ap- 
plied to  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays).  ''And 
it  is  almost  equally  certain  that  he  must  have  obtained 
it  at  the  grammar  school  of  his  native  town. ' ' 

Dr.  Baynes  then  takes  Brinsley  and  Hoole's  account 
of  "Grammar  school  teaching  of  the  time,"  which,  he 
says,  "is  of  the  nature  of  contemporary  evidence"  as 
to  what  the  boy  learned.  Hoole's  book,  written  about 
1625,  fifty  years  after  Shaksper' s  boyhood,  "abounds 
with  references  to  the  course  of  instruction  in  the 
Wakefield  grammar  school,  .  .  .  and  as  they  agree 
with  Brinsley,  we  may  accept  them  as  a  guide  to 
the  course  of  instruction  at  Stratford."  (In  same 
way,  we  might  as  sensibly  be  called  on  to  accept  as  the 
course  of  instruction  in  the  backwoods  of  one  of  our 
states  the  course  prescribed  in  the  principal  towns  and 
cities.  Stratford,  as  we  have  seen,  was  one  of  the 
lowest  class  of  villages  of  its  period;  in  its  stagnation, 
and  ignorance,  and  booklessness,  one  to  compare  un- 
favorably with  anything  that  can  be  found  in  our  back- 
woods, and  to  suppose  that  amongst  the  sort  of  people 
who  lived  there,  there  was  growing  up  a  generation  of 
children  who  were  receiving  the  advanced  education 
Dr.  Baynes  outlines,  is  ridiculous.  Even  the  man 
Shaksper,  player,  manager,  money  lender,  thriving  and 
rich,  did  not  send  his  own  daughters  to  school,  and  in 
the  absence  of  all  direct  testimony  on  the  matter,  it  is 
highly  improbable  that  John  Shaksper  ever  sent  Will- 


VIEWS   OF   THK    BAYNKS   SCHOOL.  441 

iam  to  school.  It  would  be  contrary  to  the  traditions 
and  habits,  to  the  hereditary  set  of  the  brain  of  the 
tribe.  In  all  their  generations  and  connections  the 
Shakspers  had  been  and  were  illiterate.  Ignorant 
people  have  no  appreciation  of  any  book  knowledge 
for  their  children  beyond  enough  to  help  them  along 
in  the  world,  and  they  hold  the  three  fs  sufficient  for 
that  purpose.  As  to  anxiety  to  have  their  cubs 
grounded  in  the  classics,  it  is  nonsense.)  "In  his 
first  year,  therefore,  Shaksper  would  be  occupied 
with  the  accidence  and  grammar.  In  the  second  year, 
with  the  elements  of  grammar,  he  would  read  some 
manual  of  phrases  and  dialogues.  In  his  third,  he 
would  take  up  Cato's  Maxims  and  Ksop's  Fables.  In 
his  fourth,  he  would  read  the  Eclogues  of  Mantuanus, 
parts  of  Ovid,  some  of  Cicero's  Epistles  and  probably 
one  of  his  shorter  treatises.  In  his  fifth  year,  he 
would  continue  the  reading  of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses, 
with  parts  of  Virgil  and  Terence;  and  in  the  sixth 
year,  Horace,  Plautus,  and  probably  parts  of  Juvenal 
and  Perseus,  with  some  of  Cicero's  Orations,  and 
Seneca's  Tragedies.  In  going  through  such  a  course, 
unless  the  teaching  at  Stratford  was  exceptionally  in- 
efficient, the  boy  must  have  made  some  progress  in 
several  of  these  authors  and  acquired  sufficient  knowl- 
edge of  the  language  to  read  fairly  well  at  sight  the 
more  popular  verse  and  prose  writers,  such  as  Ovid 
and  Cicero."  175. 

"Having  now  gained  a  general  idea  of  Shaksper1  s 
course  of  school  instruction"  (is  not  the  logic  delicious?), 
'  'we  have  next  to  inquire  whether  his  writings  supply 
any  evidence  of  his  having  passed  through  such  a 


442  SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

course."  178.  And  so  Dr.  Baynes  goes  on  to  search 
the  plays,  and  sure  enough,  he  finds  all  the  evidence 
he  wanted,  and  unexpectedly  comes  on  evidence  of 
greater  proficiency  than  he  had  any  idea  of,  a  regular 
bonanza.  He  finds  that  Shaksper  must  have  had 
some  experience  of  the  special  exercises  belonging  to 
the  higher  forms,  amongst  others  those  of  making 
Latin,  or  writing  Latin  epistles,  themes  and  theses. 
1 88.  Good  boy!  All  tradition  agrees  that  he  must 
have  left  school  at  the  age  of  thirteen  (if  he  went  at 
all),  because  of  his  father's  poverty,  the  period  of 
which  is  well  fixed  by  the  records  of  suits  and  judg- 
ments at  Stratford  against  the  unlucky  man.  But  this 
excellent  son  not  only  learned  all  that  could  be  learned 
in  the  regular  course  of  each  year  he  attended  school, 
but  managed  to  gain  on  the  upper  forms  to  a  surprising 
degree,  especially  remarkable  when  we  consider  that 
all  school  books  were  chained  to  the  desk,  write  Latin, 
talk  Latin,  and  revel  in  Latin  generally.  Why,  then, 
with  this  vast  learning,  was  he  bound  apprentice  to  a 
butcher,  and  why  did  he  have  to  consort  with  vaga- 
bonds and  ostracised  players  in  order  to  make  a  living  ? 
But  the  marvel  does  not  stop  here.  "In  addition  to 
Latin  composition,  another  distinctive  branch  of  study 
in  the  upper  school  was  rhetoric."  190.  The  good 
Doctor  has  as  much  certainty  that  there  was  such  a 
school  as  if  he  had  seen  it  and  run  it.  "We  may 
fairly  assume  that  Shaksper  remained  long  enough 
at  school  to  reach  the  fifth  form,  and  Love's  Labour  's 
Lost  supplies  a  curious  piece  of  evidence  tending  to 
show  that  he  had  gone  through  a  technical  training  in 
the  elements  of  rhetoric",  a  discovery  on  which  the 


VIEWS   OF   TH£   BAYNES  SCHOOL.  443 

Doctor  plumes  himself  as  having  been  hitherto  over- 
looked by  the  critics  and  commentators,"  etc. 

"The  higher  qualities  of  Ovid's  genius  and  work 
were  indeed  precisely  of  the  kind  to  attract  and  fasci- 
nate the  youthful  author  of  Venus  and  Adonis."  201. 
I  agree  to  that  myself.* 

"The  earlier  quotations  (from  Ovid)  show  that 
Shaksper  had  extended  his  studies  in  Ovid,  not 
only  beyond  the  books  usually  read  in  the  schools,  the 
De  Tristibus,  and  the  Metamorphoses,  but  beyond 
the  utmost  limits  where  the  help  of  a  translation  was 
available. ' '  209.  This  testimony  of  the  learned  Dr. 
Baynes  seems  to  be  at  variance  with  the  smattering, 
picking  up,  theory  of  Phillipps,  Wallace,  Fiske  and 
others.  Apparently  the  author  of  the  plays  cannot  be 
the  man  of  whom  Ben  Jonsou  said,  that  he  had  "small 
Latin".  That  was  the  bard  of  Stratford. 

"It  is  well  known  that  Shaksper  derived  several 
of  the  names  occurring  in  his  dramas,  such  as  Autoly- 
cus,  -directly  from  Ovid.  Also  Titania  is  clearly  de- 
rived from  the  study  of  Ovid  in  the  original."  212. 
On  p.  209,  he  quotes  from  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew, 

"Let's  be  no  stoics,  nor  no  stocks,  I  pray; 
Or  so  devote  to  Aristotle's  checks 
As  Ovid  be  an  outcast  quite  abjured." 

The  enthusiastic  Doctor  tells  us  that  this  last  line 

*  Even  Wendell,  89,  talks  of  Shaksper's  "altering  and 
adapting  Ovid  with  excessive  verbal  care,  and  altering  Plautus; 
but  Wendell's  co-professor,  Rolfe,  and  the  other  one,  John 
Fiske,  are  unable  to  find  evidence  that  the  writer  of  the  poems 
and  plays  had  much  Latin,  "little,  perhaps  none",  Rolfe  says. 


444  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE). 

"suggests  that  Shaksper  had  found  Ovid's  refresh- 
ing tales  a  welcome  relief  from  his  professional  labors, 
a  stimulating  relaxation  for  leisure  hours. '  '*  On  which 
I  would  remark,  that  it  is  not  impossible  that  this  may 
have  been  true  of  the  author  of  the  plays,  but  as  to 
William  Shaksper,  player  and  manager,  he  was  ac- 
customed to  seek  a  "welcome  relief"  and  "stimulating 
relaxation"  from  certain  fluids  not  far  from  hand  in 
London  then  as  now. 

"We  have  no  evidence  to  show  whether  Shaksper 
was  well  acquainted  with  Catullus  or  not,  but  we  know 
that  he  was  a  diligent  student  of  Ovid. "  329.  Truly, 
he  who  seeks  shall  find. 

Dr.  Baynes'  view  is  that  Stratford  was  a  lovely 
town  (swept  by  contract  every  night),  with  fine 
houses  and  cultivated  people;  a  grammar  school  that 
was  auxiliary  to  Oxford,  and  free  to  all  comers.  The 
Shakspers  were  of  the  gentry,  of  distinguished  an- 
cestry on  both  sides.  Young  William  was  nourished 
on  the  Bible,  Holinshed  and  Plutarch;  later  on  Ovid 
and  Tully ;  ahvays  slept  with  a  volume  of  Ovid  beneath 
his  pillow,  Hence,  etc.  Alas,  we  remember  that  Don 
Quixote's  battlemented  castle  resolved  itself  into  a 
humble  inn,  and  the  knights  and  ladies  into  sow- 
gelders  and  cobbler's  daughters. 


*Of  course  Shaksper's  well-thumbed  copy  of  Ovid  had  to 
be  found,  and  we  read  in  I^ee,  15:  "In  the  Bodleian  Library  is  a 
copy  of  the  Aldine  edition  of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses  (1502)  and 
on  the  title  is  the  signature  'Wm.  Sh.'  which  experts  have 
declared — not  quite  conclusively — to  be  a  genuine  autograph  of 
the  poet."  Inasmuch  as  this  Shaksper  never  wrote  his  name 
twice  alike,  of  course  this  autograph  is  as  genuine  as  the  rest. 


VIEWS    OF   THE    BAYNES   SCHOOL.  445 

The  trouble  with  Dr.  Baylies'  piece  of  sculpture  is 
that  we  happen  to  know  what  the  historical  Shaksper 
was,  and  the  sculptured  creature  does  not  in  any  one 
point  resemble  the  real  individual.  That  Shaksper 
was  himself  a  poet,  after  a  fashion,  no  one  denies. 
His  effusions  are  well  known.  Thus: 

"  Teft  in  the  hundred  the  Devil  allows, 
But  Combe  will  have  twelve,  he  swears  and  vows, 
If  any  one  asks  who  lives  in  this  tombe, 
'  Ho',  quoth  the  Devil,  't  is  my  John  a  Combe." 

This,  and  two  or  three  morceaux  of  like  character, 
including  the  Lucy  lampoon,  and  the  doggerel  verse  on 
his  tomb-stone,  are  all  that  are  authentically  recorded 
of  the  works  of  William  Shaksper,  player  and  man- 
ager. 

"Time  has  spared  two  specimens  of  Shaksper's  mode 
of  attack.  It  so  happens  that  one  of  them  is  a  ballad, 
and  the  other  an  epigram;  the  first  written  on  a  per- 
son whose  park  he  had  robbed,  and  the  second  on  a 
friend  who  had  left  him  a  legacy."  Gifford,  Memoirs 
of  Ben  Jonson,  Moxon's  Hd.  18. 

As  to  the  probability  of  any  such  thorough  and  ad- 
vanced school  having  existed  at  such  a  place  as  Strat- 
ford: "The  common  people  were  densely  ignorant.. 
They  had  to  pick  up  their  mother  tongue  as  best 
they  could.  The  first  English  grammar  was  not  pub- 
lished until  1586  (after  Shaksper  had  left  school).  It 
was  evident  that  much  schooling  was  impossible,  for 
the  necessary  books  did  not  exist.  The  horn-book 
for  teaching  the  alphabet  would  almost  exhaust  the 
resources  of  the  common  day-schools  that  might  ex- 


446        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

1st  in  the  towns  and  villages.  Little,  if  any,  English 
was  taught  even  in  the  lower  classes  of  the  grammar 
schools."  Goadby,  England  of  Shakespeare,  quoted 
from  Donnelly,  30. 

"As  a  rule,  since  the  event  (the  Reformation), 
there  was  no  educated  person  in  the  parish  beyond 
the  parson."  Prof.  Thorold  Rogers,  Donnelly,  30. 

What  Halliwell-Phillipps  says  of  the  educational 
possibilities  of  the  boy  Shaksper,  I  have  before  re- 
corded: that,  if  he  went  to  school  at  all,  his  earliest 
knowledge  of  Latin  was  derived  from  the  elementary 
books  mentioned, — that  all  the  authorities  unite  in 
telling  us  that  his  acquaintance  with  Latin  through- 
out his  life  was  of  a  limited  character;  that  books 
were  very  scarce;  and  that  the  Latin  grammar  and  a 
few  classical  works,  chained  to  the  desk  of  the  free 
school,  were  probably  the  only  volumes  of  the  kind  to 
be  found  in  Stratford."  Now,  Mr.  Halliwell-Phillipps 
is  stated  by  Wilder  to  have  been  a  '  'great  Shaksperean 
scholar  and  antiquary.  .  .  .  Gradually  he  came 
to  concentrate  upon  Shaksper  alone,  and  more  par- 
ticularly on  the  facts  of  his  life. ' '  He  dealt  in  facts, 
as  Dr.  Baynes  dealt  in  fiction,  and  therefore,  of  the 
two,  when  facts  are  in  question,  his  book  alone  is  trust- 
worthy. 

What  became  of  the  other  learned  youths  who  grad- 
uated at  the  same  school?  Is  there  any  known  man 
of  that  generation  who  has  been  traced  to  the  Strat- 
ford school?  Not  one,  and  for  the  best  of  reasons: 
there  was  no  such  boy  or  man,  and  no  such  school. 

"Even  had  there  been  books,  it  seems  that  there 
were  no  schoolmasters  in  the  days  when  young  William 


VIEWS   OF   THE   BAYNES   SCHOOL.  447 

weiit  to  school,  who  could  have  taught  him  what  was 
necessary.  Ascham,  who  came  a  little  earlier  than 
Shaksper,  said  that  such  masters  as  were  to  be  had 
amounted  to  nothing,  and  for  the  most  part,  so  be- 
haved themselves  that  their  very  name  is  hateful  to 
the  scholar,  etc.  Milton,  who  came  a  little  later,  said 
that  their  teaching  was  mere  babblement  and  notions. ' ' 
Morgan,  V.  and  A.,  143. 

Craik  says:  "It  maybe  doubted  if  popular  education 
was  farther  extended  at  the  close  of  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth  than  it  was  at  the  commencement  of  that  of 
her  father  or  her  grandfather.  Even  the  length  of 
time  that  printing  had  been  at  work,  and  the  multi- 
plication of  books  that  must  have  taken  place,  had 
probably  but  very  little,  if  at  all,  extended  the  knowl- 
edge and  the  habit  of  reading  among  the  mass  of  the 
people. ' '  I  think  we  may  dismiss  the  subject  of  the 
Stratford  Grammar  School  and  the  learning  Baynes 
imagines  was  acquired  there,  as  not  deserving  a  second 
thought. 

Nothing  new  concerning  the  boy,  or  the  man  Shak- 
sper, has  been  discovered  since  the  end  of  the  century 
of  his  death. 

Mrs.  Ball,  160,  says:  "On  the  24th  of  March,  1603, 
the  Queen  died.  In  spite  of  many  marks  of  her  favor 
he  wrote  no  verse  of  eulogy  or  lamentation.  His 
silence  was  remarked,  for  more  than  one  of  the 
smaller  poets  called  on  him  by  name  to  bewail  the  dead 
Queen.  He  never  forgave  the  Queen,  who  put  Essex 
to  death,"  etc.,  etc. 

According  to  Ingleby,  p.   56,  an  anonymous  versi- 


448  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPKARK. 

fier,  1603,  wrote  "A  mourneftil  Dittie  entitled  Eliza- 
beth's lyosse",  etc.,  in  which  are  these  lines:— 

"You  poets  all,  brave  Shakspeare,  Jonson,  Greene, 
Bestow  your  time  to  write  for  England's  Queene, 
Lament,  lament,  lament  you  English  Peeres, 
Lament  your  losse  possest  so  many  years. 
Returne  your  songs  and  sonnets  and  your  lavs: 
To  set  forth  sweet  Elizabetha's  praise." 

To  be  sure  Shakespeare,  the  poet,  is  here  called  on, 
but  the  summons  has  no  application  to  Shaksper  the 
player.  Beyond  this  Ingleby  gives  nothing,  and  evi- 
dently this  anonymous  smaller  poet  was  the  only  one 
who  called  on  Shakespeare  to  bewail,  etc.  Player 
Shaksper  did  not  lament  in  verse;  he  would  have  at 
once  exposed  himself.  There  is  a  story  of  a  jackdaw 
in  a  dovecote,  who  opened  his  mouth  with  disastrous 
results  to  his  standing. 


VIEWS   OF   THE   PHILUPPS   SCHOOL,    ETC.        449 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

VIEWS  OF  THE  PHILUPPS  SCHOOL;  OF  MR.  FLEAY, 
AND  SOME  OTHER  COMMENTATORS. 

As  I  have  said,  there  are  various  schools  of  Shak- 
spereaus.  One,  including  such  writers  as  Halliwell- 
Phillipps  and  Richard  Grant  White,  give  faith  to  the 
traditions  and  testimonies,  and  allow  the  boy  William 
a  very  humble  beginning,  scanty  instruction,  followed 
by  apprenticeship  to  a  butcher,  "the  practical  life  of 
a  butcher,"  H.-P.  says,  with,  from  the  nature  of  the 
case,  in  that  ignorant  and  bookless  neighborhood,  no 
opportunities  for  mental  improvement,  and  take  him 
to  London  about  twenty-one  or  twenty-two  years  of 
age.  The  next  few  years,  concerning  which  they  say 
there  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence  as  to  his  occupations, 
are  held  by  this  school  as  having  been  the  educational 
period  of  Shaksper's  life,  and  necessarily.  He  put 
out,  they  say,  the  Venus  and  Adonis  seven  years  after 
he  entered  London,  and  as  this  proved  his  education, 
he  must,  somehow,  have  educated  himself  withiii 
these  seven  years;  because,  as  Halliwell-Phillipps  ex- 
presses it,  "it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  when  he  first 
left  Stratford  he  was  not  all  but  destitute  of  polished 
accomplishments.  After  he  had  once,  however,  gained  a 
footing  in  London,  he  would  have  been  in  different 
conditions.  Books  of  many  kinds  would  have  been 
accessible  to  him  and  he  would  have  been  within  daily 
hearing  of  the  dramatic  poetry  of  the  age.  There 


450  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

would  also  no  doubt  have  been  occasional  facilities 
for  picking  up  a  little  smattering  of  the  continental 
languages,  and  it  is  also  beyond  a  doubt  that  he  added 
somewhat  to  his  classical  knowledge  during  his  resi- 
dence in  the  metropolis. ' '  Can  Mr.  Phillipps  be  talk- 
ing of  the  same  man  Professor  Baynes  has  in  mind, 
the  accomplished  student,  who  in  his  teens  was  fa- 
miliar with  Ovid  and  Catullus  ? 

''It  is,  for  instance,  hardly  possible,  that  the  Amores 
of  Ovid,  whence  he  derived  his  earliest  motto,  pre- 
fixed to  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  could  have  been  one  of 
his  school-books. "  H.  -P. 

Mr.  Fleay,  as  we  have  seen,  takes  a  very  different 
view  from  that  of  Mr.  Phillipps.  In  the  first  place, 
he  brings  young  Shaksper  to  London  from  one  to  two 
years  later  than  Phillipps  does;  in  the  next  place,  he 
has  him  writing  plays — plays  of  high  life — almost  at 
once,  and  keeps  him  writing  play  after  play  in  rapid 
succession.  Apparently  he  would  allow  no  other  oc- 
cupation to  interfere  with  writing — that  was  the  young 
man's  special  business.  On  page  25,  however,  we  are 
told  that  up  to  1593  (from  1587  to  1593)  "he  had  been 
an  actor,  gradually  rising  in  the  estimation  of  his  fel- 
lows," (this  must  be  pure  intuition  on  Mr.  Fleay's 
piart,  for  there  is  no  testimony  to  that  effect),  "but  had 
often  been  obliged  to  travel,  and  to  act  about  town  in 
inn-yards,  and  his  play  writing  had  been  confined  to 
vamping  old  plays  by  other  men,  or  at  best,  to  assist- 
ing such  writers  as  Wilson  and  Peele  in  producing  new 
ones."  Yet  it  would  seem  clear  to  the  average  mind, 
that  if,  in  1589,  two  years  after  he  entered  London,  he 
produced  Love's  Labour's  Lost,  followed  almost  im- 


VIEWS   OF   THE   PHII^IJPPS   SCHOOL,  ETC.        451 

mediately  by  Love's  Labour 's  Won  (Much  Ado  About 
Nothing),  and  by  1591,  the  three  other  plays  before 
enumerated,  he  must  have  obtained  somewhere  a  very 
advanced  education,  and  that,  of  course,  could  only 
have  been  gained  at  Stratford. 

On  page  7,  we  read:  "Nothing  whatever  is  known 
of  his  early  life,"  and  the  only  two  reliable  facts  are, 
the  date  of  his  baptism,  and  that  of  his  marriage,  all 
between  being  a  blank.  Doubtless,  if  this  were  so, 
William  Shaksper  might  have  had  an  education  as 
thorough  as  John  Milton's,  for  aught  that  could  be 
known,  and  have  come  naturally,  without  violence,  to 
be  a  writer  of  poems  and  plays,  though  it  would  still 
be  a  matter  of  astonishment  that  so  accomplished  a 
youth  could  have  sunk  so  low,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
three,  as  to  be  compelled  to  consort  with  strolling 
players. 

Mr.  Fleay  reasons  back  from  the  plays — this  young 
man  wrote  them;  therefore  he  had  an  education  and 
training  that  enabled  him  to  write  them.  As  this  is 
unsupported  by  any  testimony,  and  contrary  to  all  the 
traditions,  Mr.  Fleay 's  view  cannot  be  the  correct  one, 
although  he  is  probably  right  when  he  fixes  the  dates 
at  which  the  several  Shakespeare  plays  first  appeared. 

"Thou  canst  not  utter  what  thou  dost  not  know", 
the  author  of  the  plays  tells  us.  It  is  none  of  Mr. 
Fleay 's  business  where  young  Shaksper  got  his  learn- 
ing and  accomplishments,  and  he  gives  no  hint  as  to 
what  he  thinks  of  that  matter.  His  book  is  written 
for  "discussion  of  the  evidence  on  which  the  chrono- 
logical succession  of  Shakespeare's  plays  is  based", 
and  Phillipps'  "facts"  may  take  care  of  themselves. 


452  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

Here  is  a  Shakespeare  play  acted  in  1589,  and,  of 
course,  written  earlier,  and  before  that,  preparation 
made  for  it  by  study,  meditation,  and  travel.  This  is 
followed  by  three  others,  in  1590  and  1591.*  One  set 
of  facts  refuses  to  make  a  tight  joint  with  the' other  set 
of  facts,  and  like  the  memorable  ass  between  the  two 
bundles  of  hay,  William  Shaksper  is  left  hungry— 
and  is  also  out  in  the  cold.  Some  other  man  wrote 
those  plays.  William  is  not  to  be  blamed  apparently; 
his  greatness  was  thrust  upon  him,  long  after  he  was 
moldering  in  the  ground.  During  his  lifetime,  and  he 
lived  twenty- four  years  after  the  first  appearance  of  a 
Shakespeare  play,  not  a  soul  attributed  the  authorship 
to  him  or  thought  of  him  as  an  author  of  any  kind. 
More  than  that,  there  is  no  evidence  that  he  ever 
claimed  to  be  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  or 
any  one  play  of  the  thirty-six;  or  that  he  ever  opened 
his  mouth  on  the  subject  of  authorship. 

*  Wendell's  book  is  one  of  the  latest  on  this  subject,  and  the 
author  says,  p.  82:  "The  weight  of  opinion  makes  this,  Love's 
Labour's  Lost,  the  earliest  play  unquestionably  assigned  to 
Shakspere.  It  is  conjectured  from  internal  evidence  to  have 
been  written  as  early  as  1589,  or  1590."  Of  the  Comedy  of 
Brrors,  he  says,  p.  88:  "Modern  critics  generally  agree  in  plac- 
ing it,  on  internal  evidence,  before  1591,  with  a  slight  prefer- 
ence for  1589,  or  1590."  Of  the  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  he 
says,  92:  "On  internal  evidence  modern  critics  generally  agree 
in  placing  it  early — from  1591  to  1593  or  so."  Of  Romeo  and 
Juliet,  he  says,  116:  "Conjectures  as  to  date  range  from  1591." 
So  it  is  apparent  that  the  best  modern  critics  are  agreed  that 
several  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  were  written  during  the  years 
Phillipps  assigns  to  the  educational  period  of  William  Shaksper 's 
life,  and  that  the  series  was  begun  shortly  after  that  young  fel- 
low came  to  London, 


THE   SMATTERING,    PICKING-UP   SCHOOt.         453 

CHAPTER  XX. 

THE  SMATTERING,  PICKING-UP  SCHOOL. 

Dr.  Wallace  makes  the  young  man  gather  knowl- 
edge of  law  terms  by  attending  inquests  and  Justices' 
Courts  at  Stratford,  and  by  occasional  attendance  upon 
the  Courts  at  Westminster,  after  he  came  to  London. 
He  continues:  "Through  his  foreign  acquaintances 
he  might  have  obtained  translations  of  some  of  those 
Italian  or  Spanish  tales  which  furnish  a  portion  of  his 
plots,  and  which  have  been  supposed  to  indicate  an 
amount  of  learning  he  could  not  have  possessed." 

This  school  regards  Shaksper  as  a  phenomenal  hu- 
man sponge  which  imbibed  knowledge  by  capillary  at- 
traction, and  not  by  hard  labor,  as  ordinary  mortals 
do.  The  author  of  these  works,  Dr.  Wallace  says, 
"was  a  transcendent  genius,  and  it  is  the  special 
quality  of  genius  to  be  able  to  acquire  and  assimilate 
knowledge  .  .  .  under  conditions  that  to  ordinary 
men  would  be  impossible.  Admitting,  as  we  must  ad- 
mit, the  genius,  there  is  no  difficulty,  no  impossibility." 
And  Dr.  Wallace  goes  on  to  say,  as  I  have  mentioned 
before,  that  Shaksper  got  his  exquisite  knowledge  of 
Nature,  which  the  plays  show  to  be  extraordinary  and 
profound,  (but  which  the  writer  in  the  Quarterly  above 
quoted  proves  to  have  been  gained  from  books  and 
traditions  and  not  from  nature)  from  living  twenty 
years  "in  the  midst  of  the  calm  and  beautiful  scenery 
of  Warwickshire' ' .  (Though  what  connection  there 


454  SHAKSPER   NOT 

is  between  scenery  and  a  knowledge  of  nature,  does 
not  appear. )  He  acquired  '  'some  portion  of  the  knowl- 
edge of  manners  and  speech  of  nobles  and  kings 
which  appear  in  the  historical  plays  from  resorting  at 
times  of  festivity  to  the  lordly  castles  of  Warwick  and 
Kenilworth",  aided  by  the  instruction  of  the  servants 
and  retainers.  "  He  would  have  studied  human  na- 
ture under  every  possible  aspect  in  London,  then  as 
now,  crowded  with  adventurers  of  all  nations." 
(London  was,  in  1603,  a  city  of  150,000  inhabitants — 
the  size  of  Jersey  City  or  Minneapolis  in  1900).  How 
he  gained  his  classical  learning,  so  extensive  that  the 
Latin  language  became  "amalgamated  and  consub- 
stantiated  with  his  native  thought, ' '  and  how  he  be- 
came the  possessor  of  the  15,000  to  21,000  vocabulary, 
Dr.  Wallace,  and  none  of  that  school  explain.  They 
speak  of  a  "smattering",  of  ' 'picking-up"  somewhat. 
Mrs.  Dall  says:  "He  wrote  as  a  bird  sings".  A 
writer  in  the  Boston  Transcript,  March  3oth,  1894, 
says  of  him:  "He  had  but  a  smattering  of  book- 
learning.  Nature  was  his  only  book";  which  is  to 
say  that  he  had  no  learning  at  all.  "Was  this  man, 
so  extraordinary  from  whatever  side  we  look  at 
him  ...  an  inspired  idiot,  a  vast  irregular  genius, 
a  simple  rustic,  warbling  his  native  wood-notes  wild; 
in  other  words  insensible  to  the  benefits  of  culture?" 
Lowell.  Even  to  Halliwell-Phillipps  the  Shakespeare 
plays  seem  to  have  been  written  by  inspiration,  not  by 
design,  and  it  is  the  only  way  to  account  for  them,  if 
player  Shaksper  wrote  the  plays. 

Another  writer  in  the  Transcript,  hailing  from  Ber- 
lin, July  3rd,  1894,  te^s  tne  public  that  Edwin  Bor- 


THE   SMATTERING,    PICKING-UP   SCHOOL.         455 

man,  poet,  etc.,  has  shown,  in  a  book  of  many  pages, 
that  Bacon  was  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  Plays. 
In  a  few  days  he  is  followed  by  a  long  letter  from  one 
John  Michels,  taking  the  ground  that  Bacon  could 
not  have  been  the  author,  because  the  plays  show  the 
author  to  have  been  illiterate  and  are  everywhere  de- 
fective— fuii  of  all  sorts  of  blunders.  This  sort  of 
talk  intentionally  belittles  the  acquirements  of  the 
real  author,  in  order  to  make  him  come  into  agreement 
with  the  historic  man  aud  player  William  Shaksper. 

Let  us  see  what  a  Professor  of  English  at  Harvard 
College  teaches  his  classes;  quoting  Barrett- Wendell's 
"William  Shakspere",  published  1894,  P-  4°°: 
"Nothing  more  surprises  such  readers  of  Shakespeare 
as  are  not  practical  men  of  letters"  (such  as  Hartley 
Coleridge,  S.  T.  Coleridge,  J.  R.  Lowell,  Henry  J. 
Ruggles,  and  that  ilk,  I  suppose)  "than  the  man's  ap- 
parent learning.  To  one  used  to  writing,  the  phe- 
nomenon is  less  surprising.  Whoever  will  take  a  few 
Elizabethan  books,  North's  Plutarch,  for  example, 
Paynter's  Palace  of  Pleasure,  Fox's  Martyrs,  Holins- 
hed,  and  Coke  on  Littleton,"  (Hear  that,  ye  shades  of 
great  lawyers  from  Elizabeth  to  Victoria!)  "and  with 
the  help  of  stray  passages  from  all,  translate  some 
narrative  from  one  of  these  into  blank- verse  dialogue, 
will  produce  an  effect  of  erudition  which  shall  pro- 
foundly impress  not  only  his  readers  but  himself. 
Whoever  has  a  few  compendious  works  on  hand,  and 
knows  how  to  use  them,  can  make  himself  seem  a 
miracle  of  learning  to  whoever  does  not  know  his 
secret.  .  .  .  Given  these  facts,  and  given  the  ex- 
ceptionally concrete  habit  of  thought  and  phrase 


456  SHAKSP3R   NOT   SHAKESPEARE}. 

native  to  Shakspere,  and  Shakspere's  learning  is  no 
longer  a  marvel,  except  to  those  who  insist  upon 
finding  it  so." 

The  lectures  of  Wendell  may  be  the  source  of  so 
many  letters  in  the  Transcript,  the  past  few  years,  be- 
littling the  author  of  these  plays.  I  should  like  to 
hear  this  lecturer  of  Harvard,  who  thinks  that  any- 
body could  have  written  these  immortal  works — a  mere 
matter  of  trick  to  one  who  knows  the  secret — explain 
how  it  came  to  pass  that  the  author  attained  the 
enormous  vocabulary  we  have  heard  of;  how  it  was 
that  he  coined  new  words  by  hundreds,  currente  calamo, 
whenever  he  needed  to  do  so  to  express  his  thought, 
coined  directly  from  the  Latin  or  Greek  root;  whose 
mind  was  so  imbued  with  the  Latin  language  that  he 
unconsciously  incorporated  it  into  his  English;  whose 
classical  allusions  are  amalgamated  and  consubstan- 
tiated  with  his  native  thought,  according  to  one  used 
to  writing,  if  anybody  ever  was,  how  it  happened  that 
Hallam,  and  Coleridge,  and  Lowell,  and  hundreds  of 
other  men  used  to  writing,  have  recorded  their  verdict 
that  the  man's  learning  was  real  and  prodigious,  and 
not  apparent  and  fraudulent;  how  it  is  that  Prin- 
cipal Baynes  extols  the  solid  learning,  which  he  says 
the  writings  supply  clear  evidence  of;  how  it  was  that 
he  could  have  written  works  that  are  classed  by  Mr. 
Marsh  with  the  Bible  and  Milton;  how  it  was  that, 
according  to  Mr.  Ruggles,  a  diligent  student  of  both 
Bacon's  works  and  the  Shakespeare  plays,  the  author 
of  the  latter  was  everywhere  in  touch  with  the  Bacon- 
ian philosophy,  and  the  whole  scope  and  tenor  of  the 
plays  exemplifies  the  system  of  that  philosophy;  how 


THE  SMATTERING,  PICKING-TIP  SCHOOL.       457 

it  was  that  lawyer  White  declared  that  legal  phrases 
flowr  from  his  pen  as  a  part  of  his  vocabulary  and 
parcel  of  his  thought;  and  Chief- Justice  Campbell, 
that  the  works  show  the  author  to  be  very  familiar 
with  some  of  the  most  abstruse  proceedings  in  Eng- 
lish jurisprudence,  and  that  Shakespeare's  law  is  al- 
ways good  law. 

(Is  it  possible  that  any  literary  man  to-day,  to  say 
nothing  of  a  professional  lecturer  on  English  literature, 
can  know  so  little  of  law  as  to  suppose  that  a  play- 
wright,  educated  or  uneducated,  could  pick  up  good 
law  and  apply  it  correctly,  and  make  himself  familiar 
with  the  abstruse  proceedings  of  English  jurisprudence, 
by  glancing  at  and  running  through  Coke  on  Littleton  ? 
Certainly  the  language  used  assumes  that  such  a  thing 
is  possible.  Is  there  not  a  law  school  at  Cambridge, 
where  a  literary,  non-legal  man,  could  be  told  what  a 
ridiculous  claim  that  is?)  I  rather  think  lecturer 
Wendell  would  do  well  to  study  his  Shakespeare  anew, 
and  see  if  he  has  not  overlooked  something. 

On  p.  423-4,  of  same  book,  I  find  this:  "The  son  of 
a  ruined  country  tradesman,  and  saddled  with  a  wife 
and  three  children,  his  business  at  twenty-three  was 
to  conduct  himself  so  that  he  might  end  it  not  as  a 
laborer,  but  as  a  gentleman.  After  five-and-twenty 
years  of  steady  work,  this  end  had  been  accomplished. 
.  .  .  Such  a  material  achievement  as  Shakspere's 
involves  an  imaginative  feat  quite  as  wonderful,  if 
not  so  rare,  as  the  imaginative  feat  involved  in  the 
creation  of  Shakspere's  works."  Which  looks  very 
much  like  an  assertion  that  the  making  one's  pile  is 
quite  as  wonderful  an  achievement  as  the  writing  of 


458  SHAKSPER   NOT 

great  poems  and  plays;  and  the  implication  is  that  if 
a  man  could  accomplish  the  one,  he  had  in  him  the 
possibility  of  the  other. 

It  is  a  strange  thing  that  this  Shaksper,  who  had 
but  a  smattering  of  learning,  and  that  consisting  of 
such  bits  as  he  had  picked  up  after  he  came  to  I^n- 
don,  should,  as  the  author  "Shakespeare",  be  cited  on 
every  page  of  the  great  dictionaries  for  current  and 
correct  usage  of  English.  According  to  some  advo- 
cates of  the  smattering  view,  he  was  so  ignorant  that 
he  did  not  know  that  Bohemia  was  an  inland  coun- 
try, or  that  Ajax  and  Ulysses  were  not  modern  Ital- 
ians— made  endless  exhibitions  of  himself  in  history, 
archaeology,  geography;  yet  when  it  came  to  the  words 
used,  there  was  no  ignorance,  no  blundering.  He 
blundered  in  all  directions  save  in  the  use  of  the  Eng- 
lish language.  It  is  enough  to  find  a.  word  in  the 
Shakespeare  plays  to  give  it  authority  and  currency. 
This  man  was  a  great  worker  in  words,  says  Ruggles. 
"He  had  supreme  dominion  over  every  form  of  ex- 
pression". We  have  seen  that  Marsh  asserts  that 
Shakespeare  and  Milton  and  the  Bible  were  the  three 
lode-stars  that  held  the  language  firm,  the  attraction 
of  the  Shakespeare  star  as  powerful  as  either  of  the 
others.  Curious  enough  that  nine- tenths  of  the  peo- 
ple in  the  English-speaking  countries  should  have  got 
it  in  their  heads  that  one  of  the  three  who  helped  to 
hold  the  language  firm,  was  an  uneducated  butcher, 
who  spent  the  first  twenty-two  years  of  his  life  in  a 
bookless  neighborhood,  and  the  last  thirty  years  as  a 
tramp  player,  or  as  a  purveyor  of  '  'nasty  fish-scraps' ' 
to  the  stinkards  and  prostitutes  who  frequented  the 


THE   SMATTERING,    PICKING-UP   SCHOOL.        459 

public  theater.     There  was  a  Shakespeare  as  well  as  a 
Shaksper,  and  a  little  mixing  has  been  done. 

Fleay,  82,  tells  us  that  these  plays  could  never  have 
been  conceived  without  much  solitude,  much  suffer- 
ing and  much  concentration.*  But  this  is  neither 
more  nor  less  than  an  assertion  that  manager  Shaksper 
had  no  hand  in  them.  The  authorities  are  agreed  that 
he  led  the  life  of  a  strolling  player  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end  of  his  career.  At  no  time,  then,  had  he 
solitude.  He  could  not  have  had  it  as  he  tramped, 
and  when  in  L,ondon,  he  was  one  of  those  who  kept 
high  jinks  at  the  taverns.  There  is  no  record  of,  and 
no  probability  of,  his  ever  suffering  a  pang,  being  the 
man  he  was,  beyond  what  he  felt  at  the  escape  of 
some  poor  devil  of  a  debtor  whom  he  had  got  into  his 
clutches.  When,  in  1609,  one  Addenbroke,  whom  he 
had  tormented  for  six  pounds,  skipped,  and  our 
usurer-player  had  to  proceed  against  his  bail,  one 
Hornby,  (Fleay,  161),  his  anguish  must  have  been 
powerful;  and  when  his  nice  scheme  of  getting  pos- 
session of  the  common  fields  came  to  naught,  doubt- 
less he  beat  his  breast.  I  agree  with  Mr.  Fleay,  how- 
ever, that  the  author  of  the  plays,  whoever  he  was, 
had  worked  in  solitude,  suffered  much,  and  had  an 
amazing  power  of  concentration.  But  he  was  of  an- 
other species  from  this  player.  It  is  truly  a  remark- 
able thing  that  every  characteristic  of  the  author  as 

*  "Whoever  wrote  King  Lear  must  have  been  intellectually 
alert  to  the  verge  of  madness,  passionately  sensitive  to  all  the  mis- 
ery he  perceived,  ironical  yet  pitiful;  kept  within  the  bounds  of 
sanity  mostly  by  the  blessed  accident  that  he  had  mastered  and 
controlled  a  great  art  of  expression."  Wendell,  301. 


460  SUAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

deduced  from  the  plays,  renders  it  the  more  impossible 
that  player  Shaksper  had  any  hand  in  them. 

As  to  acquiring  knowledge  without  study,  it  cannot 
be  done.  One  man  will  learn  more  easily  than  an- 
other, but  the  one  has  to  work  as  well  as  the  other. 
Genius  will  do  wonders  with  material  once  gathered, 
but  genius  does  not  provide  or  originate  facts  on  which 
to  work.  No  man  ever  became  learned  out  of  his  own 
consciousness.  The  verdict  of  mankind,  based  on  all 
experience,  is  that  knowledge  comes  neither  by  in- 
spiration nor  accident,  and  that  there  is  no  royal,  or 
other  than  the  common,  road  to  learning.  Daniel 
Webster  said  to  one  who  asked  him  if  his  reply  to 
Hayne  had  not  been  extemporaneous,  "Young  man, 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  extemporaneous  acquisi- 
tion." Lodge,  Life  of  Webster,  tells  us  (p.  190)  that 
"he  is  reported  to  have  said  that  his  whole  life  had 
been  a  preparation  for  the  reply  to  Hayne.  Whether 
he  said  it  or  not,  the  statement  is  true.  The  thoughts 
.  .  .  had  been  garnered  for  years,  and  this  in  a 
greater  or  less  degree  was  true  of  all  his  finest  efforts. 
The  preparation  on  paper  was  trifling,  but  the  mental 
preparation,  extending  over  weeks,  sometimes  per- 
haps over  years,  was  elaborate  to  the  last  point." 

"Men  give  me  credit  for  genius,"  said  Alexander 
Hamilton.  "All  the  genius  I  have  lies  in  just  this: 
when  I  have  a  subject  in  hand,  I  study  it  profoundly 
day  and  night.  It  is  part  of  me;  I  explore  it  in  all  its 
bearings;  my  mind  becomes  pervaded  writh  it.  Then 
the  effort  which  I  make  people  are  pleased  to  call  the 
fruit  of  genius;  it  is  the  fruit  of  labor  and  thought." 
A  distinguished  writer,  commenting  on  this,  said: 


THE   SMATTERING,    PICKING-UP   SCHOOL.         461 

"Hamilton  was  a  genius  in  spite  of  his  disavowal; 
but  genius  cannot  supply  the  place  of  information, 
nor  render  unnecessary  the  thorough  work  which  must 
precede  mastery  of  any  subject,"  etc.  And  yet  there 
are  people — scholars  too — who  argue  and  pretend  to 
believe  that  one  man  of  all  the  sons  of  men  was  so 
constructed  that  he  was  able  to  toss  off  learned  works 
with  no  preparation,  no  study,  and  no  information, 
and  that  all  he  did  this  for  was  to  fill  his  theater  and 
his  own  pockets.  They  appear  to  be  rational  on  other 
subjects.  They  would  scout  the  idea  of  something 
coming  out  of  nothing;  of  effects  without  sufficient 
causes;  of  water  rising  higher  than  its  source,  or 
running  up  hill;  of  the  barber's  basin  being  the 
golden  helmet  of  Mambrino.  Sane  on  all  subjects 
save  one,  Shaksper;  and  there  as  lunatic  as  ever  was 
Don  Quixote. 

On  the  other  hand,  Dr.  Baynes,  finding  profound 
learning,  knowledge  and  accomplishments,  in  the 
poems  and  plays,  and  feeling  confident  that  after 
young  Shaksper  came  to  L,ondon  and  began  his  life 
with  the  strolling  players,  there  was  no  chance  for 
acquisition,  gives  him  an  ample  equipment  at  the 
Stratford  school,  and  all  the  advantages  of  birth  and 
breeding  of  which  I  have  spoken.  No  matter  what  the 
traditions  and  testimonies  are,  they  come  in  contact 
with  the  plain  fact  that  this  man,  even  while  very 
young,  had  vast  learning  acquired  from  books,  as  the 
poems  and  plays  show,  and  also  that  their  author 
was  a  gentleman  born  and  bred.  From  Dr.  Baynes' 
point  of  view,  this  theory  is  undoubtedly  correct.  If 
William  Shaksper,  of  Stratford,  really  wrote  these 


462  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

plays,  the  traditions  must  be  swept  away  as  absurd 
and  false,  and  the  author  must  be  built  up  from  his 
works.  And  Baynes  does  build  very  skillfully  a 
structure,  which,  if  we  knew  nothing  whatever  of  the 
history  of  Shaksper,  might  be  accepted  as  a  faithful 
likeness  of  the  boy  and  man.  Neither  school,  there- 
fore, presents  us  with  the  historical  man;  he  is  ig- 
nored altogether. 

It  is  just  as  credible  that  an  unlettered  country  lad, 
coming  up  to  L,ondon,  should  presently  put  out  the 
counterparts  of  Wallace's  Island  Life,  or  Darwin's 
Origin,  under  immediate  inspiration,  or  spontaneous 
acquisition,  works  that  cost  either  of  those  authors 
fully  thirty  years  of  laborious  preparation,  as  that  the 
youth  William  Shaksper,  and  the  man  Shaksper,  de- 
picted on  the  pages  of  Halliwell-Phillipps,  could  have 
written  the  poems  and  plays  attributed  to  "William 
Shakespeare' ' .  If  one  were  told  that  John  Thomas 
took  a  running  leap  and  vaulted  over  an  umbrageous 
oak,  no  evidence  of  alleged  eye-witnesses  could  make 
a  reasonable  man  believe  it.  He  would  say  there  must 
have  been  some  trick,  some  illusion,  something  he 
could  not  understand,  and  refuse  his  faith.  So  with 
the  Shaksper  case;  no  testimony,  however  direct, 
should  make  a  reasonable  man  believe  that  this  un- 
learned youth  and  man  was  or  could  be  the  author  of 
the  learned  works  in  question.  It  happens  that  there 
is  no  direct  testimony  whatever.  Absolutely,  beyond 
Ben  Jonson's  gibing  elegiac  verses,  (as  we  have  seen, 
even  Mr.  Fleay  tells  us  that  little  value  is  to  be  at- 
tributed to  them) ,  there  is  no  testimony  of  any  kind — 


THE   SMATTERING,    PICKING-UP   SCHOOL,.         463 

nothing  but  imputation  and  general  reputation.  These 
things  occurred  three  hundred  years  ago,  and  there 
was  some  secret,  some  deception,  some  illusion.  That 
from  an  unlearned  man  proceeded  learned  writings 
is  an  impossible  thing,  and  reversing  Tertullian's 
maxim,  being  impossible,  it  is  therefore  incredible. 


464        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 


CHAPTER    XXL 

THE  LIKENESSES  OF  WILLIAM  SHAKSPER. 

Men  of  intellect  have  intellectual  heads,  and  learn- 
ing leaves  its  impress  on  the  face.  The  only  authen- 
tic likeness  of  Shaksper,  the  only  one  certified  to  by 
any  man  who  had  personally  known  him,  is  that  pre- 
fixed to  the  Folio  of  1623,  distinguished  as  the  "Droes- 
hout". 

In  1624,  James  Boaden  published  "An  Enquiry  into 
the  authenticity  of  various  Pictures  and  Prints  which 
from  the  decease  of  the  Poet  to  our  own  times,  have 
been  offered  to  the  public  as  Portraits  of  Shakespeare. ' ' 
No.  i  is  the  Droeshout  likeness,  and  I  give  a  copy  of 
it  from  Boaden,  on  the  following  page. 

Under  it,  in  the  Folio,  stand  Jonson's  lines: 

"This  figure,  that  thou  seest  put 
It  was  for  gentle  Shakespeare  cut; 
Wherein  the  graver  had  a  strife 
With  nature,  to  out-do  the  life;"  etc. 

Ingleby,  141,  on  this  verse,  says:  "Jonson  here 
contrives  to  pay  both  Engraver  and  Poet  the  highest 
compliment;  if  the  former  could  have  drawn  the  wit 
of  the  latter  as  well  as  he  has  drawn  his  face,  the 
print  from  his  drawing  would  be  the  finest  thing  ever 
done." 

Mr.  R.  G.  White  says:  "This  print  is  a  hard, 
wooden,  staring  thing";  and  Mr.  Donnelly,  that  "no 


THE  LIKENESSES  OK  WIUJAM  SHAKSPER.     465 

Shaksperean  has  yet  been  found  to  admit  it  as  the 
idol  of  his  dreams. ' ' 

Norris,   Portraits  of  Shakspere,   says:     "It  is  not 


known  from  what  it  was  copied,  and  many  think  it 
unlike  any  human  being." 

Morgan  says:  "The  hair  is  straight,  combed  down 
the  sides  of  the  face,  and  bunched  over  the  ears;  the 
forehead  is  disproportionately  high;  the  face  has  the 


466  SHAKSPKR   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

wooden  expression  familiar  in  the  Indians  used  as 
signs  for  tobacconists  shops,  accompanied  by  an  idiotic 
stare." 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  I,  297:  "The  Stratford  effigy 
and  this  engraving  are  the  only  unquestionably  au- 
thentic representations  of  the  living  Shakespeare 
(Shaksper)  that  are  known  to  exist;  not  one  of  the 
numerous  others,  for  which  claims  to  the  distinction 
have  been  advanced,  having  an  evidential  pedigree  of 
a  satisfactory  character. ' '  He  considers  the  Droeshout 
an  authentic  likeness,  because  of  Jonson's  verses  un- 
der it;  which  verses,  it  is  clear  to  me,  testify  to  this 
portrait  having  been  a  caricature. 

In  the  long  line  of  illustrious  English  poets,  William 
Shaksper,  held  by  most  people  to  have  written  the 
Shakespeare  poems  and  plays,  and  to  tower  above  all 
that  Britain  has  produced  in  the  way  of  poets,  is  the 
only  man  who  looks  in  the  Droeshout  likeness  of  him 
to  be  an  interloper  in  that  company.  Chaucer  and 
Spenser,  Milton  and  Wordsworth,  Byron,  Scott,  Ten- 
nyson, in  their  portraits,  look  the  great  men  they  were; 
whereas  Shaksper  is  vulgar  by  comparison  with  any 
one  of  them,  and  has  the  presentation  of  little  better 
than  a  fool.  (Among  variety-show  or  circus  people, 
perhaps  he  would  look  as  intellectual  as  the  next  man). 
Hence  the  pathetic  eagerness  with  which  his  disap- 
pointed votaries  turn  to  the  bogus  Flower  portrait,  the 
bogus  Chandos  portrait,  to  the  bogus  death-mask, — 
given  in  the  Hamlet  volume  of  the  Temple  Shake- 
speare as  an  undoubted  relic — the  bogus  "best  like- 
ness", composed  and  set  up  in  Stratford-on-Avon  by 
Ronald  Gower;  ready  to  accept  anything  so  that 


/ 

I    UNr 

v 

^<          ^' 

NKSSKS^W^nXWAM   SHAKSPER.       467 


it  looks  entirely  unlike  that  Droeshout  or  unlike  the 
man  himself. 

Skottowe,  App.  23,  says:  "Without  the  reader  has 
had  the  misfortune  to  behold  this  much  eulogized 
specimen  of  the  graphic  art,  he  will  be  surprised  to 
learn  that  the  plate  is  not  only  at  variance  with  the 
tradition  of  Shakspere's  appearance  having  been  pre- 
possessing; but  irreconcilable  with  a  belief  of  its  ever 
having  borne  a  striking  resemblance  to  any  human 
being.  Its  defects,  indeed,  are  so  obvious,  that  it  has 
been  thought  necessary  to  apologize  for  Jonson  by  the 
production  of  similar  instances  of  prostitution  of  com- 
pliment; and  also  by  the  supposition  that  he  never  saw 
the  engraving,  '  '  etc. 

Drake  speaks  of  the  "wretched  engraving,  thus  un- 
deservedly eulogized"  (by  Jonson),  and  says:  "As 
Mr.  Steevens  has  well  remarked,  Shakspere's  coun- 
tenance, deformed  by  Droeshout,  resembles  the  sign 
of  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  when  it  had  been  changed 
into  a  Saracen's  head;  on  which  occasion  the  Spectator 
observes  that  the  features  of  the  gentle  Knight  were 
still  apparent  through  the  lineaments  of  the  ferocious 
Mussulman." 

Reed,  35,  says  of  this  Droeshout:  "It  is,  without 
doubt,  a  caricature,"  and  he  quotes  Ingleby,  "I,  for 
one,  do  not  believe  that  it  had  any  trustworthy  ex- 
emplar"; and  Norris,  "It  is  not  known  from  what  it 
it  was  copied,  and  many  think  it  unlike  any  human 
being." 

Mr.-  L,ee  has  prefaced  his  book  with  a  cut  of  what 
is  called  the  Flower  likeness,  and  on  page  288,  says: 
"There  is  little  doubt  that  young  Droeshout  in  fashion- 


468        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

ing  his  engraving  worked  from  a  painting,  and  there  is 
a  likelihood  that  the  original  picture  from  which  he 
worked  has  lately  come  to  light.  As  recently  as  1892, 
Mr.  Edgar  Flower,  of  Stratford-on-Avon,  discovered 
in  the  possession  of  Mr.  H.  C.  Clements,  residing  at 
Peckham  Rye,  a  portrait  alleged  to  represent  Shake- 
speare. The  picture,  which  was  faded,  and  somewhat 
worm-eaten,  dated  bej^ond  all  doubt  from  the  early 
years  of  the  seventeeth  century.  It  was  painted  on  a 
panel  formed  of  two  planks  of  old  elm,  and  in  the 
upper  left  hand  corner  was  the  inscription,  'Willm 
Shakespeare,  1609.  Mr.  Clement  purchased  the  por- 
trait of  an  obscure  dealer  about  1840,  and  knew  noth- 
ing of  its  history  beyond  what  he  set  down  on  a  slip 
of  paper  when  he  acquired  it:  'The  original  portrait 
of  Shakespeare,  from  which  the  now  famous  Droeshout 
engraving  was  taken,'  "  etc.  Mr.  L,ee  goes  on:  "Con- 
noisseurs have  almost  unreservedly  pronounced  the 
picture  to  be  anterior  in  date  to  the  engraving,  and 
they  have  reached  the  conclusion  that,  in  all  probabil- 
ity, Martin  Droeshout  directly  based  his  work  upon  the 
painting.  .  .  Although  the  history  of  the  portrait 
rests  on  critical  conjecture,  and  on  no  external  con- 
temporary evidence,  there  seems  good  ground*  for  re- 
garding it  as  a  portrait  of  Shakespeare  painted  in  his 

*  Behold  a  fine  example  of  the  genesis  and  growth  of  a  Shak- 
sperean  myth.  Mr.  Lee  thinks  '  'there  seems  good  ground, ' '  etc. ; 
the  next  man  assumes  that  the  ground  is  good;  and  prefaces  the 
new  edition  of  the  Temple  Shakespeare  with  the  Flower  portrait 
as  a  genuine  likeness  of  the  bard.  First  the  demand,  then  the 
find  and  a  suggestion,  and  presently  the  assertion,  and  the  myth 
is  on  its  way! 


THE   LIKENESSES   OF   WIUJAM   SHAKSPER.      469 

life  time— in  the  forty-fifth  year  of  his  age."     I  give  a 
copy  of  this  likeness. 


It  is  another  case  of  demand  and  supply.  When 
anything  in  the  Shaksper  line  is  needed,  the  gods  have 
a  way  of  producing  it.  I  should  say  that  the  face  of 
this  picture  represents  a  man  of  not  over  thirty- 
five  years  of  age,  which  is  about  that  of  the  Droes- 
hout.  It  has  a  conspicuous  moustache  of  which  there 
is  no  trace  in  the  Droeshout.  But  without  criticising 


470  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

the  portrait  myself,  I  have  only  to  refer  to  a  paper 
published  in  Harper's  Magazine,  May,  1897:  "On  two 
undescribed  Portraits  of  Shakespeare",  by  John  Corbin. 
After  relating  all  the  arguments  used  to  authenticate 
the  Flower  Portrait,  and  the  opinions  of  experts — 
artists  and  antiquaries — in  its  favor,  he  goes  on  to  say: 
"In  the  discussion  that  followed,  (at  a  meeting  of  the 
Antiquarian  Society)  Sir  Charles  Robinson,  Her  Ma- 
jesty's Surveyor  of  Pictures,  pointed  out  that  the  in- 
scription is  in  cursive  characters.  The  custom  of  that 
period  was  to  use  capitals.  Mr.  Sidney  Colvin,  Keeper 
of  Prints  in  the  British  Museum,  told  me  later  that 
this  cursive  inscription  was  unique  in  his  experience. 
Abandoning  therefore  the  inscription  and  date,  Sir 
Charles  guardedly  attributed  the  picture  to  the  early 
half  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

"On  the  other  hand,  Dr.  Furnivall  assailed  the  pict- 
ure with  his  customary  vigor,  on  the  ground  that  it 
has  no  pedigree,  and  declared  that  it  was  a  make-up 
of  the  late  seventeenth  century  from  the  print  and  the 
bust,  both  of  which  the  artist  had  seen.  .  .  .  Since 
the  meeting  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries,  Sir  Charles 
Robinson  has  shifted  his  ground.  In  spite  of  the  ex- 
pert testimony  that  the  panel  is  antique  English  elm, 
Sir  Charles  still  declares  (October,  1896)  that  it  is 
foreign,  and  pronounces  the  portrait  a  very  careful 
forgery.  In  September,  1896,  Mr.  Sidney  Colvin  told 
me  that,  though  he  should  assign  the  portrait  to  a 
very  late  date,  perhaps  the  first  half  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  he  regarded  it  as  a  very  careful  copy 
of  the  print.  Sir  K.  J.  Poynter  observed  that  there 
are  traces  of  an  earlier  portrait  on  the  surface,  notably 


THE   LIKENESSES   OF   WILLIAM   SHAKSPER.      471 

the  edge  of  a  ruff  in  the  right- hand  corner,  and  a  line 
from  the  right  eye  down  the  cheek. ' '  Mr.  Corbin  was 
desirous  of  getting  a  scientific  description  of  the  por- 
trait, and  "so  wrought  upon  the  enthusiasm  of  a  con- 
noisseur of  the  school  of  Morelli  and  Berenson,  that  he 
went  with  me  to  Stratford.  Although  he  insists  that 
his  judgment  is  merely  that  of  an  amateur,  he  has 
kindly  permitted  me  to  copy  his  notes:  %ife-size 
painted  on  a  thin  coating  of  gesso.  .  .  .  The 
panel  is  English  elm,  worm-holed,  and  of  undoubted 
antiquity.  Red  appears  in  the  ground  where  the  over- 
painting  has  cracked  off.  Hair  apparently  painted  in 
bitumen.  All  the  drawing  precisely  like  that  on  the 
print,  including  costume.  Technique,  an  illogical  com- 
bination of  broad,  scratchy,  and  of  smooth.  Clearly, 
a  late  copy  of  the  print' . ' ' 

Mr.  Corbin  speaks  of  the  worm  holes  in  the  panel, 
and  certain  appearances  of  same:  "Some  of  them  are 
clear-cut;  others  seem  painted  round  the  edges;  and  at 
least  one,  in  the  line  of  the  right  cheek-bone,  has 
plainly  been  painted  over;  it  is  discernible  now  only 
because  the  paint  has  sagged  into  it.  If  these  ap- 
pearances are  to  be  relied  on,  the  painter  sought  to 
give  an  appearance  of  antiquity  by  using  a  panel  al- 
ready worm-holed.  In  coloring,  the  portrait  resem- 
bles the  bust  with  a  single  exception.  I  failed  to  find 
the  least  trace  of  hazel  in  the  eyes;  they  are  simply 
muddy  blue." 

So  much  for  this  Flower  portrait !  We  shall  have  to 
fall  back  on  Lord  Ronald  Gower's  "best  likeness." 

The  cut  next  given  is  taken  from  a  photogravure  of 
Macinonnie's  statue  of  player  Shaksper,  made  for  the 


472  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

Congressional  library,  at  Washington,  and  is  meant 
to  follow  the  Droeshout  portrait,  which  it  does  pretty 
well.  But  the  sculptor  has  thought  best  to  give  a 


bulging  upper  forehead  to  his  creation,  which  is  not 
in  the  Droeshout,  and  doubtless  this  is  meant  to  intro- 
duce a  modicum  of  brains.  It  would  seem  rather 
rickets  than  brains.  As  in  the  Droeshout,  the  brow  is 
depressed,  showing  a  very  weak  development  of  the 
perceptive  organs.  The  figure  is  hardly  what  might 
be  expected  as  that  of  a  man  equal  to  writing  the 
Shakespeare  plays.  He  seems  to  be  lecturing  to  one 
of  Professor  Wendell's  classes  on  English  belles-lettres, 


THE:  LIKENESSES  OF  WILLIAM  SHAKSPKR.     473 

One  thing  is  noticeable,  that  there  is  not  the  least  re- 
semblance between  this  face,  made  from  the  Droeshout, 
and  the  face  of  the  Stratford  bust. 

No.  2,  of  Boaden,  is  a  portrait  prefixed  to  the  edi- 
tion of  the  plays  of  1630,  supposed  by  that  author  to 
be  a  copy  of  the  other,  '  'or  the  unknown  picture  from 
which  it  was  taken. ' ' 

No.  3,  the  "Felton  Head,"  is  dismissed  as  spurious. 

Next  in  order  comes  the  Stratford  bust,  No.  4,  and 
copied  here  from  Boaden  (see  on  following  page): 

This  bust  represents  a  man  fully  fifty  years  of  age, 
built  after  the  model  of  a  bullet-headed  general,  one 
of  Elizabeth's  warriors,  perhaps.  It  has  a  short, 
thick,  nearly  straight  nose;*  a  long  and  thick  upper 
lip;  a  full  lower  lip;  a  wide,  flat  face;  a  stout  jaw  and 
square  chin;  eyes  projecting;  mustache  midway  be- 
tween the  nose  and  edge  of  lip,  tightly  curling  up- 
ward; a  pointed  beard;  and  the  lightly  curling  hair 
ends  above  the  ears.  (This  arrangement  of  hair  and 
beard  was  in  the  latest  fashion  of  the  period. ) 

Dowden  says,  41:  "It  (the  bust)  presents  a  face 
powerful  and  full-blooded,  rather  than  refined  or 
subtle;"  and  adds,  42:  "Besides  the  bust  there  is  only 
one  authenticated  portrait  of  the  great  poet,  that  upon 
the  title  page  of  the  First  Folio."  That  is,  in  Mr. 


*  Mr.  Corbin,  in  the  paper  before  quoted,  says  of  the  nose  of 
the  bust:  "It  is  so  short  that  the  end  is  generally  supposed 
to  have  been  chipped  off  accidentally  early  in  the  carving, 
and  the  present  apology  for  a  nose  carved  out  of  what  re- 
mained." Which  is  an  ingenious  way  of  accounting  for  one 
discrepancy  between  bust  and  print.  What  about  the  others, 
the  hair,  for  example  ? 


474  SHAKSPER    NOT    SHAKESPEARE. 

Dowden's  opinion,  the  Droeshout  portrait  is  one  like- 
ness of  Shaksper,  and  this  bust  is  another.  There  is 
not  one  feature  in  common  between  the  Droeshout 


,,- 


and   the  bust.     If  one   is   a  likeness  the  other  can- 
not be. 

"This  bust  was  carved  by  nobody  knows  whom, 
from  nobody  knows  what,  and  nobody  knows  when; 
for  the  accepted  statement  that  it  was  cut  by  Gerald 


THK  LIKENESSES   OF  WIU,IAM   SHAKSPER.      475 

Johnson,  an  Amsterdam  "Tombe- maker',  can  be  traced 
to  no  historical  source."  Morgan.  "If  Ben  Jonson, 
knowing  his  friend  William  Shakspere  to  have  been 
the  martial  and  elegant  looking  gentleman  the  Strat- 
ford bust  represents  him,  authorized  the  verses  under 
the  Droeshout  engraving,  it  was  a  deliberate  libel  on 
his  part,  only  perhaps  to  be  explained  by  his  secret 
enmity  to  William  Shakspere."  Id. 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  281,  says:  "The  precise  history 
of  the  bust  is  unknown",  but  he  supposes  it  may 
have  been  made  by  a  "tomb- maker"  in  London.  "It 
was  originally  painted  in  imitation  of  life,  the  face  and 
hands  of  the  usual  flesh  color,  the  eyes  a  light  hazel, 
and  the  hair  and  beard  auburn.  The  realization  of 
the  costume  was  similarly  attempted  by  the  use  of 
scarlet  for  the  doublet,  black  for  the  loose  gown,  and 
white  for  the  collar  and  wristbands.  But  colors  on 
stone  are  only  of  temporary  endurance,  and  not  only 
had  so  large  a  portion  of  them  disappeared  in  the  lapse 
of  a  hundred  and  thirty  years,  but  so  much  decay  was 
observable  in  some  parts  of  the  effigy,  that  it  was  con- 
sidered advisable,  in  1748,  to  have  it  entirely  renovated. 
It  is,  of  course,  impossible  at  this  day  to  assess  the  ex- 
tent of  the  mischief  that  may  have  been  perpetrated  on 
that  occasion,  but  that  it  was  very  considerable  may  be 
inferred  from  a  contemporary  account  of  the  directions 
given  to  the  artist,  who  was  instructed  to  'beautify'  as 
well  as  'repair' ,  and  to  make  the  whole  as  like  as  pos- 
sible to  what  it  was  when  first  created.  .  .  .  In  1793, 
Malone  persuaded  the  vicar  to  allow  the  whole  of  the 
bust  to  be  painted  in  white. ' '  On  this  matter,  it  is  well 
to  hear  Charles  L,arnb:  "The  wretched  Malone  could 


476  SHAKSPER   NOT    SHAKESPEARE. 

not  do  worse,  when  he  bribed  the  sexton  of  the  Strat- 
ford Church  to  let  him  white-wash  the  painted  effigy 
of  old  Shakespeare,  which  stood  there,  in  rude  but 
lively  fashion,  depicted  to  the  very  color  of  the  cheek, 
the  eye,  the  eye-brow,  the  very  dress  he  used  to  wear 
— the  only  authentic  testimony  we  had,  however  im- 
perfect, of  those  curious  parts  and  parcels  of  him. 
They  covered  him  over  with  a  coat  of  white  paint. 
By  — ,  if  I  had  been  a  justice  of  the  peace  for  Warwick- ' 
shire,  I  would  have  clapt  both  commentator  and  sex- 
ton fast  in  the  stocks,  for  a  pair  of  meddling,  sacri- 
legious varlets. ' ' 

Boaden's  copy,  of  course,  gives  the  bust  in  its  white 
phase.  Mr.  Phillipps  adds:  "It  remained  in  this  last 
mentioned  (white)  state  for  many  years;  but,  in  1861, 
there  was  a  second  imitation  of  the  original  coloring. 
This  step  was  induced  by  the  seriously  adverse  criti- 
cism to  which  the  operation  of  1793  had  been  sub- 
jected; but  although  the  action  then  taken  has  been 
so  frequently  condemned,  it  did  not  altogether  oblite- 
rate the  semblance  of  an  intellectual  human  being,  and 
this  is  more  than  can  be  said  of  the  miserable  travesty 
which  now  distresses  the  eye  of  the  pilgrim. ' ' 

Drake,  after  telling  us  how  the  bust  had  been  orig- 
inally colored,  goes  on: — "After  remaining  in  this 
state  above  120  years,  Mr.  John  Ward,  grandfather  of 
Mrs.  Siddons  and  Mr.  Kemble,  caused  it  to  be  re- 
paired, and  the  original  colors  preserved,  in  1784,  from 
the  profits  of  the  representation  of  Othello.  This  was 
a  generous,  and  apparently  judicious  act,  and  there- 
fore very  unlike  the  next  alteration  it  was  subjected 
to,  in  1793.  In  that  year,  Mr.  Malone  caused  the 


THE   LIKENESSES  OF   WILLIAM   SHAKSPER.      477 

bust  to  be  covered  with  one  or  more  coats  of  white 
paint,  and  thus  at  once  destroyed  its  original  char- 
acter, and  greatly  injured  the  expression  of  the  face. 
Having  absurdly  characterized  this  expression  for 
pertness,  and  therefore  'differing  from  that  placid 
composure  and  thoughtful  gravity  so  perceptible  in 
his  original  portrait  (the  Droeshout),  and  his  best 
prints',  Mr.  Malone  could  have  few  scruples  about  in- 
juring or  destroying  it." 

Mr.  Phillipps  says:  "The  exact  time  at  which  the 
monument  was  erected  in  the  church  is  unknown,  but 
it  is  alluded  to  by  Leonard  Digges  as  being  there  in 
the  year  1623."  This  allusion  is  found  in  Digges' 
doggerel  verses  partly  quoted  before. 

"  Shake-speare,  at  length  thy  pious  fellowes  give 
The  world  thy  Workes;  thy  Workes,  by  which,  out-live 
Thy  Tombe,  thy  name  must;  when  that  stone  is  rent, 
And  Time  dissolves  thy  Stratford  moniment, 
Here  we  alive  shall  view  thee  still." 

Mr.  Phillipps  proceeds:  "Upon  a  rectangular  tablet, 
placed  below  the  bust,  are  engraved  the  following  lines: 

'  Judicio  Pylium,  genio  Socratem,  arte  Maroneni 
Terra  tegit,  populus  moeret,  Olympus  habet. 
Stay  passenger,  why  goest  thou  so  fast? 
Read,  if  thou  canst,  whom  envious  death  hath  plast 
Within  this  monument,  Shakspeare,  with  whome 
Quick  nature  dide;  whose  name  doth  deck  ys  tombe 
Far  more  then  cost;  sith  all  yt  he  hath  writt 
Leaves  living  art  but  page  to  serve  his  witt. ' 

"It  is  not  likely  that  these  verses  were  composed 
either  by  a  Stratfordian,  or  by.any  one  acquainted  with 
their  destined  position,  for  otherwise  the  writer  could 


hardly  have  spoken  of  Death  having  placed  Shak- 
speare  'within  this  monument'." 

Shaksper  was  buried  under  the  floor  of  the  church 
several  feet  away  from  the  bust  set  in  the  wall.  The 
tablet  for  aught  that  appears,  may  have  been  put  up  fifty 
years  or  more  after  the  bust,  and  the  verses  were  writ- 
ten by  some  one  who  got  all  his  notions  *  of  William 
Shakespeare  from  reading  the  Folio.  No  contempo- 
rary of  '  'William  Shakespeare' '  or  William  Shaksper, 
would  have  eulogized  the  author  of  the  plays  as  hav- 
ing had  the  wisdom  of  Nestor,  the  wit  of  Socrates, 
and  the  art  of  Virgil,  or  would  have  said  that  when 
that  poet  died  nature  died  with  him;  that  sort  of  ap- 
preciation came  generations  after  1623.  Nor  would 
any  one  in  that  age  have  said  that  the  world  mourned 
for  either  Shakespeare  or  Shaksper.  I  have  before 
shown  that  the  world  neither  mourned  for  the  player 
nor  poet,  nor  cared  anything  about  the  latter,  until  a 
long  period  after  1623. 

As  to  the  bust,  this  is  doubtless  how  it  came  to  be. 
Mortuary  sculptors,  time  out  of  mind,  have  kept  in 
stock  an  assortment  of  their  wares,  f  You  pay  your 

*  The  first  mention  of  this  tablet  inscription  was  by  Mr.  Dow- 
dall  (Ingleby,  417)  whose  visit  to  Stratford  church,  and  whose 
talk  with  the  old  sexton,  I  have  elsewhere  spoken  of.  This  oc- 
curred on  loth  April,  1693,  seventy  years  therefore  later  than 
the  date  of  Digges'  verses.  Mr.  Dowdall's  words  are:  "Just 
under  his  effigies  in  the  wall  of  the  chancell  is  this  written;" 
and  he  gives  in  full  the  inscription  on  the  tablet. 

|  We  read   in  Maspero's  "Dawn  of   Civilization"  respecting 
the  tomb-makers  of  ancient   Egypt:    "The  sculptors     .     . 
like  our  modern  tombstone1  makers,  kept  by  them  a  tolerable 
assortment  of  half-finished  statues,  from  which  the  purchaser 


TUB  UKKNKSS  OF  WItUAM    SHAKSPKR.         479 

money  and  get  your  choice,  be  it  statue,  or  shaft,  or 
simple  slab.  This  bust  was  ready  to  serve  for  any- 
thing or  anybody,  a  hero  of  the  wars,  a  Lord  Mayor, 
or  an  honest  country  gentleman;  and  the  player's 
people  caught  at  it.  Sold  to  Mistress  Hall  by  a 
drummer  (Anglice,  a  bagman)  probably. 

No.  5,  the  "Chandos  Portrait",  the  best  known  of 
all,  entirely  unauthenticated,  and  unlike  any  other 
Shaksper  portrait.  This  is  the  one  that  figures  in 
the  Hudson  Shakespeare. 

L,ee  says  of  this  Chaudos  portrait,  292:  "Its  pedi- 
gree suggests  that  it  was  intended  to  represent  the 
poet,  but  numerous  and  conspicuous  divergences  from 
the  authenticated  likenesses  show  that  it  was  painted 
from  fanciful  descriptions  of  him  some  years  after  his 
death." 

No.  6,  "The  Zucharo  Portrait"  dismissed  by  Boaden 
as  not  painted  from  life;  and  not  improbably  did  not 

could  choose  according  to  his  taste.  .  .  .  When  the  family  had 
made  their  choice,  a  few  hours  work  was  sufficient  to  transform 
the  rough  sketch  into  a  portrait,  such  as  it  was,  of  the  deceased 
they  desired  to  commemorate,  and  to  arrange  his  garment  ac- 
cording to  the  latest  fashion.''1  By  which  it  appears  that  this 
custom  of  the  tomb-makers  is  a  venerable  one — say  6,000  years 
old.  And  so  it  happens  that  the  Stratford  bust  resembles  the 
man  depicted  in  the  Droeshout  in  about  the  same  degree  as  the 
bust  of  the  Sheik  el-Beled  (Maspero,  408)  resembles  the  bust 
of  Cheops.  Indeed  there  is  a  strong  family  resemblance  be- 
tween the  bust  of  Stratford  and  that  of  the  military  Sheik. 
For  my  part,  I  regard  the  bust  as  a  fraud,  and  the  Droeshout  as 
a  caricature,  and  do  not  believe  there  exists  a  likeness  of  player 
Shaksper.  Men  in  his  walk  of  life  were  not  in  the  habit  of 
having  their  portraits  painted. 


480  SHAKSPER   NOT 

originally  claim  to  have  been  intended  for  Shaksper 
at  all". 

No.  7,  "The  Jansen  Portrait",  unauthenticated. * 
"Thus  it  has  taken  an  army  of  novelists,  painters,  en- 
gravers, and  essayists,  to  erect  simple  William  Shak- 
sper, of  Stratford,  into  the  god  he  ought  to  have 
been;  and  according  to  the  Shakspereans  themselves, 
there  is  only  one  portrait  of  him  extant,  which  has 
even  the  assumed  advantage  of  having  been  pro- 
nounced a  likeness  by  any  one  who  ever  saw  him  in 
his  lifetime,  the  Droeshout  picture."  Morgan. 

Now  comes  the  "death-mask,"  so  much  written 
of  in  late  years.  A  plaster  cast  of  an  unnamed  face  is 
found  in  a  rubbish  shop  in  Germany,  in  1849 — 233 
years  after  the  player's  death.  It  bears  neither  the 
name  of  the  subject,  nor  of  the  maker,  nor  is 
there  any  clue  to  the  nationality  of  either;  but 
there  is  cut  upon  it  the  date  1616,  the  year  Shak- 
sper died.  Who  put  that  date  there,  or  when  it 
was  put  there,  no  one  can  tell.  It  may  have  been 
done  fifty  years  ago — or  one  hundred — no  one  can  say. 
But  obviously  the  temptation  to  manufacture  a  death- 
mask  of  William  Shaksper,  who  was  supposed  to  have 
written  the  Shakespeare  plays,  was  immense;  as  was 

*  Shaksper  is  not  the  only  Englishman,  it  seems,  who  has 
suffered  from  a  surplusage  of  likenesses.  Froude  says  of  Fran- 
cis Drake:  "The  portraits  of  him  vary  much,  as  indeed  it  is 
natural  they  should,  for  most  of  those  which  pass  for  Drake 
were  not  meant  for  Drake  at  all.  It  is  the  fashion  in  this 
country,  and  a  very  bad  fashion,  when  we  find  a  remarkable 
portrait  with  no  man's  name  attached  to  it,  to  christen  it  at 
random  after  some  eminent  man,  and  there  it  remains  to  per- 
plex and  mislead."  Eng.  Seamen,  77. 


THE    LIKENESSES   OF  WIUJAM   SHAKSPER.      481 

the  temptation  to  find  a  book  which  the  great  man  had 
personally  handled — the  Florio  Montaigne.  "The 
Shakspereans  at  once  adopt  this  anonymous  mask 
as  taken  from  the  face  of  the  defunct  William  Shak- 
sper.  Either  he,  at  his  death,  was  known  to  be  an 
immortal  bard,  or  he  was  not.  If  he  was,  how  could 
the  sole  likeness  moulded  of  departed  greatness  be 
smuggled  away  from  the  land  that  was  pious  to  claim 
him  as  its  most  distinguished  son,  and  nobody  miss 
it,  or  raise  the  hue  and  cry?  If  it  was  not,  to  whose  in- 
terest was  it  to  steal  the  mask  from  the  family  who 
cared  enough  about  the  dead  man's  memory  to  go  to 
the  expense  of  it?' '  Morgan. 

The  figure  of  this  mask,  given  on  the  following 
page,  is  copied  from  Norris. 

The  upholders  of  the  genuineness  of  the  mask  pro- 
pound the  theory  that  it  was  made  by  the  "tomb- 
maker",  supposed,  but  without  an  iota  of  evidence, 
to  have  been  Gerard  Johnson,  a  man  who,  it  seems, 
was  living  in  London  in  1616;  and  that  it  was  used 
by  him  in  modeling  the  Stratford  bust.  It  needs  but 
a  glance  at  bust  and  mask  to  show  that  they  represent 
two  individuals.  For  example,  the  long,  thin,  promi- 
nent and  curved  nose  of  the  mask  would  not  have 
been  represented  in  the  bust  by  a  short,  thick,  straight 
nose;  the  beetling  brow  of  the  mask  would  not  have 
been  represented  in  the  bust  by  a  brow  entirely  with- 
out prominence  (in  the  Droeshout  likeness  there  is 
actually  an  incurving  there);  the  lofty  and  capacious 
forehead  of  the  mask  would  not  have  been  replaced  in 
the  bust  by  a  forehead  but  moderately  high,  round  and 
bullet  shaped.  In  fact,  these  three  supposed  like- 


482 


SHAKSPKR   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 


nesses  represent  three  distinct  individuals,  with  three 
distinct  types  of  faces.  No  wonder  that  Mrs.  Ball  says 
of  this  mask:  "It  is  so  much  nobler  and  sweeter  than 


any  existing  likeness  of  him,  it  looks  so  much  more 
as  we  would  have  liked  Shakspere  to  have  looked,  that 
we  long  to  have  it  proved."  Alas!  it  cannot  be 
proved,  and  the  admirers  of  player  Shaksper  will 


THE  IJKEN^SS^S  OP  WIUJAM  SHAKSPER.      483 

have  to  content  their  souls  with  the  Droeshout  like- 
ness. 

Mr.  Dowden  says,  42:  "The  authenticity  of  the 
celebrated  Kesselstadt  death-mask  is  very  doubtful, 
but  we  could  wish  that  his  noble  and  refined  face  was 
indeed  that  of  Shakspere. ' '  The  player  was  neither 
a  noble  man,  nor  a  sweet  and  refined  character,  and 
why  it  should  be  expected  that  a  genuine  portrait  of 
him  should  surpass  the  reality,  I  fail  to  see. 

Of  this  mask,  Mr.  Phillipps,  I,  297,  thus  speaks: 
"But  in  like  manner  as  there  have  arisen  in  these 
days  critics,  who,  dispensing  altogether  with  the  old 
contemporary  evidences,  can  enter  so  perfectly  into 
all  the  vicissitudes  of  Shakespeare's  intellectual  tem- 
perament that  they  can  authoritatively  identify  at  a 
glance  every  line  that  he  did  write,  and  with  equal 
precision,  every  sentence  that  he  did  not; — even  so 
there  are  others  to  whom  a  picture's  history  is  not  of 
the  slightest  moment,  their  reflective  instinct  enabling 
them,  without  effort  or  investigation,  to  recognize  in 
an  old  curiosity  shop  the  dramatic  visage  that  belonged 
to  the  author  of  Hamlet.  Lowlier  votaries  can  only 
bow  their  heads  in  silence." 

In  an  illustrated  paper  in  "The  Strand",  London, 
1894,  by  Mr.  Alexander  Cargill,  entitled  "The  Like- 
nesses of  Shakespere' ' ,  is  a  figure  of  what  the  author 
calls  "the  best  likeness"  (so  called  on  the  lucus  a  non 
luccndo  principle,  because  it  is  no  likeness  at  all);  a 
copy  of  which  is  shown  on  the  following  page. 

This  face  looks  like  that  of  a  junior  partner  in  a 
dry  goods  store,  bent  on  selling  a  bill  of  sundries.  It 


484 


SHAKSPKR    NOT   SHAKKSPKARK. 


purports  to  have  been  gotten  up  by  I^ord  Ronald 
Gower  "for  the  Stratford  Memorial  which  he  pre- 
sented to  the  town  of  Stratford-on-Avon",  and  is  com- 
posed from  the  bust  and  the  death-mask  spoken  of. 


In  the  dapper  salesman  of  thirty- five  of  this  Me- 
morial, there  is  a  very  short  upper  lip  (like  neither 
the  Droeshout,  the  bust,  nor  the  mask),  in  the  shape 
of  Cupid's  bow,  a  small  pointed  chin  embedded  in  a 


THE   LIKENESSES   OF   WILLIAM   SHAKSPER.      485 

clipped  and  pointed  goatee,  (in  the  Droeshout,  the 
chin  is  broad  and  rounded  like  the  big  end  of  an  egg) 
a  long,  thin,  arched  nose,  arched  throughout,  (and 
not  merely  with  a  curye  in  the  middle,  followed  by  a 
depression,  as  in  the  mask),  and  deep  set  eyes  (as  in 
the  mask,  but  not  in  the  Droeshout  or  bust).  The 
organs  of  perception  are  copied  from  the  mask;  and 
the  top  of  the  head  has  a  great  development  of  what 
phrenologists  call  the  organ  of  firmness  and  self- 
esteem,  not  discoverable  in  the  "only  authentic  like- 
ness. ' '  Being  the  historical  man  we  know,  the  bump 
of  acquisitiveness  should  have  been  as  big  as  a  walnut. 
This  "best  likeness"  simply  adds  one  more  to  the 
many  counterfeit  presentments  of  William  Shaksper, 
player,  manager,  and  money-lender. 

Somehow,  forgeries  and  counterfeits  spring  up  in 
all  directions  about  this  individual;  forged  signatures 
on  fly-leaves,  to  make  him  out  to  have  been  a  reading 
man;  forged  letters  from  persons  of  quality,  to  make 
it  appear  that  he  was  intimate  with  "divers  of 
worship",  (see  a  choice  example  in  Ball,  143);  counter- 
feit portraits,  from  the  Chandos  and  Flower,  to  Rolfe's 
noble  boy;  bogus  death-masks;  and  all  with  the  pur- 
pose of  making  it  appear  that  he  was  not  the  simpleton 
the  Droeshout  portrait  depicts  him  to  have  been. 
Wherever  we  strike  him,  we  strike  imposture  and 
fraud. 


486  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

CHAPTER  XXII. 

A  SUGGESTION. 

Would  it  not  be  well  for  the  followers  of  the  Shak- 
sper  cult  to  hold  a  congress  in  order  to  settle  upon  a 
uniform  appraisement  of  the  object  of  their  venera- 
tion? One  (Baynes)  tells  us  that  he  (the  author) 
was  profoundly  learned,  by  the  evidence  of  the  works 
themselves,  and  became  so  by  the  remarkable  advan- 
tages of  school,  and  good  breeding,  and  cultivated 
society,  he  received  in  his  youth,  at  Stratford.  The 
next  man  (Halliwell-Phillipps,  "the  highest  authority 
on  the  facts  of  William  Shaksper's  life"),  declares 
all  this  to  be  a  mistake,  and  that  the  player  really  was 
unlearned,  had  no  school  advantages,  nor  access  to 
polite  society  in  his  youth;  indeed,  that  all  his  asso- 
ciations at  Stratford  were  low  and  vulgar;  but  that  he 
must  have  gained  a  smattering  of  knowledge  some- 
how, after  he  came  to  London,  and  there  developed 
into  "the  bard  of  our  admiration". 

Mr.  Fleay  tells  us  these  plays  could  never  have  been 
written  without  much  solitude,  much  suffering,  and 
much  concentration.  Halliwell-Phillipps  intimates 
that  in  his  opinion  they  were  written  '  'without  effort, 
by  inspiration,  not  by  design";  and,  what  would  seem 
incompatible  with  a  divine  origin,  that  they  were 
"written,  first  for  a  living,  and  then  for  affluence, 
with  the  sole  aim  of  pleasing  an  audience,  most  of 
whom  were  not  only  illiterate,  but  unable  to  either 


A  SUGGESTION.  487 

read  or  write."  Dr.  Ingleby  says  that  "the  drift  of 
his  plays  was  apparently  intelligible  to  the  penny- 
knaves  of  the  theater,  else  they  would  not  have  been 
played,  but  that  his  profound  reach  of  thought  and 
his  unrivaled  knowledge  of  human  nature  \vere  as  far 
beyond  the  vulgar  ken  as  the  higher  graces  of  his 
poetry;"  and  that  "we  are  at  length  slowly  rounding 
to  a  just  estimate  of  his  works."  On  the  other  hand, 
Richard  Grant  White,  and  John  Fiske,  assert  that  the 
plays  were  dashed  off  merely  to  fill  the  theater  and 
the  player's  pockets. 

The  lamented  Lowell  says:  "Whatever  we  have 
gathered  of  thought,  of  knowledge,  and  of  experience, 
compared  with  his  (Shakespeare's)  marvelous  page, 
shrinks  to  a  mere  foot-note."  His  successor  in  the 
lecturer's  chair,  Wendell,  on  the  contrary,  tells  us 
that  '  'nothing  more  surprises  such  readers  of  Shake- 
speare as  are  not  practical  men  of  letters  than  the 
man's  apparent  learning;"  and  that  "his  learning  is 
no  longer  a  marvel,  except  to  those  who  insist  on 
finding  it  so." 

Point  out  that  Mr.  Ruggles  has  demonstrated  that 
the  author  was  in' close  touch  with  Bacon,  whose  phi- 
losophy underlies  each  and  all  of  the  plays;  and  one 
of  the  self-constituted  custodians  of  player  Shaksper's 
literary  reputation  replies  that  he  allowrs  both  the 
learning  and  philosophy,  but  "if  there  were  any  in- 
debtedness it  was  not  on  the  side  of  Shakespeare;  that 
Bacon  must  have  had  time  to  be  a  spectator  of  the 
plays  .  .  .  and  have  drawn  from  them  many  of 
the  thoughts  which  helped  to  perfect  his  system;" 
and,  anyhow,  Shakespeare  (author  and  player)  "knew 


488  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

more  than  Bacon  of  the  actual  objects  of  scientific 
investigation,  of  men,  of  animals,  and  plants,  and  of 
the  universe  as  a  whole."  Verily,  the  book  reviewer 
of  the  New  York  Tribune  said  this  in  the  issue  of 
April  26,  1895. 

Very  probable  indeed,  that  Francis  Bacon,  ''the 
high-priest  of  Nature",  the  man  "whose  claim  to  un- 
disputed empire  over  men's  thoughts  has  been  ratified 
by  the  concurrent  testimony  of  ages  and  nations"- 
the  man  who  wrote  at  thirty-one,  "I  have  taken  all 
knowledge  to  be  my  province" — of  whom  Macaulay 
says,  "He,  without  effort,  takes  in  at  once  all  the  do- 
mains of  science — all  the  past,  the  present  and  the 
future;"  moreover,  one  of  the  most  eloquent  speakers, 
and  most  learned  lawyers  of  his  age,  and,  later,  I^ord 
Chancellor  of  England — was  in  the  habit  of  passing 
his  afternoons  at  a  public  theater,  in  order  to  draw 
from  the  interludes  played  there  "the  thoughts  which 
helped  to  perfect  his  system"!  Was  he  one  of  the 
penny  groundlings,  or  was  he  permitted  to  enjoy  a 
stool  on  the  stage — the  ample  and  luxurious  stage,  as 
it  appears  in  De  Witt's  picture — among  the  men  of 
rank  and  fashion,  whose  lackeys  "supply  them  with 
pipes  of  tobacco",  who  "play  cards  and  insult  the  pit", 
and  whose  nostrils  are  offended  with  the  pervading 
stenches  that  ascend  from  the  rabble,  till  the  cry 
arises,  '  'burn  the  juniper' ' ;  or  had  he  a  share  of  a  bench 
in  the  galleries  among  the  pimps  and  prostitutes,  and 
the  masked  ladies  ? 

I  imagine  the  grave  and  dignified  Francis  Bacon,  as 
I  can  imagine  William  Gladstone,  watching  for  the 
gobbets  of  wisdom  as  they  tumbled  from  the  mouths 


A   SUGGESTION.  489 

of  carpeuter  Burbage,  butcher  Shaksper,  and  grocer 
Heminge.  "Anyhow,  Shakespeare"  (supposed  to  be 
that  butcher)  "knew  more  than  Bacon  of  the  actual 
objects  of  scientific  investigation,  of  men,  of  animals 
and  plants,  and  of  the  universe  as  a  whole."  What 
an  amazing  man  Shaksper  must  have  been  in  the  view 
of  our  critic!  What  was  he  a  hireling  at  that  theater 
for — that  theater,  "the  centre  of  organized  vice,"  the 
"antechamber  to  the  neighboring  brothels,"  making 
mouths  at,  and  prancing  to,  the  groundlings  of  the 
pit?  Why  was  he  not  in  his  proper  place,  enthroned, 
surrounded  by  the  poets,  scholars,  and  philosophers  of 
England?  That  won't  do;  like  to  like;  learned  men 
seek  learned  men,  triflers  seek  triflers.* 


*  This  remarkable  charge  that  Bacon  borrowed  from  Shake- 
speare is  not  original  with  the  Tribune  critic.  Massey,  in  his 
book  on  the  Sonnets,  runs  through  several  pages  in  this  fashion: 
"Personally,  I  have  sometimes  thought  there  was  something 
conscious,  not  to  say  sinister,  in  the  silence  of  Bacon  respecting 
Shakespeare,  whom  he  must  have  known  as  the  friend  of 'South- 
ampton, the  friend  of  Essex,  the  friend  of Bacon.  ...  As 
Speckling  points  out,  Bacon  had  a  regular  system  of  taking 
notes,  and  of  intentionally  altering  the  things  that  he  quoted. 
.  .  .  This  opens  a  vast  vista  of  responsibility  in  his  covert 
mode  of  assimilating  the  thoughts,  purloining  the  gold,  and 
clipping  the  coinage  of  Shakespeare.  .  .  .  Bacon,  as  a  fre- 
quenter of  the  theater  with  Essex  and  Southampton  and  other 
of  the  'private  friends'  who  are  described  as  spending  their  time 
in  seeing  plays,  must  have  appreciated  the  presence  of  that 
genius  which  had  arisen  to  enrich  the  stage  with  Cove's  Labour  's 
Lost.  .  .  .  jj[t  has  often  been  a  matter  of  surprise  that 
Bacon  should  not  have  recognized  Shakespeare  or  his  work. 
But  now  we  know  that  he  did.  .  .  .  As  we  have  seenfit.  was 
his  practice  to  make  notes  at  the  theater,  or  to  jot  down  from 


490  SHAKSPER    NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

He  (author)  was  learned;  he  (player)  was  un- 
learned; he  (author)  had  the  most  original  mind  in 
the  universe;  he  (player)  was  a  mere  smatterer,  a 
picker-up  of  other  men's  good  things.  He  (author) 
was  of  transcendent  genius,  inspired;  he  (player)  had 
the  misfortune  to  live  outside  of  Harvard,  and  "his 
learning  is  no  longer  a  marvel"  to  some  of  us  who 
know  what's  what,  It  used  to  be  a  marvel  in  I^owell's 
time,  but  we  now  are  wiser  than  he  was,  by  many 
degrees. 

memory  the  remarkable  things  that  arrested  his  attention  there. 
His  Promus  is  J;he  record  of  much  that  he  took  directly  from 
Shakespeare.  \_For  eight  or  ten  years  he  had  free  play  and  full 
pasturage  in  Shakespeare's  field  before  he  published  his  first  ten 
essays.  ,  .  .  It  is  this  borrowing  from  Shakespeare  BY  Bacon 
that  has  given  so  much  trouble  and  labor  in  vain  to  the  Bacon- 
ians. .  .  .  The  simple  solution  is  that  Bacon  was  the  un- 
suspected thief,  who  has  been  accredited  with  the  original  own- 
ership of  the  property  purloined  by  Shakespeare.  ...  A 
vast  deal  of  Shakespeare's  thought  must  have  gone  into  Bacon's 
sweating-bag  or  melting-pot,  which  is  not  to  be  recovered  or 
recognized  by  any  familiar  features  or  quotation  marks." 

I  hope  Mr.  Massey  rested  more  comfortably  after  having  dis- 
charged all  this  bilious  m&tter—foedissima  ventris  proluvies. 


THE   SUMMING   UP.  49! 

CHAPTER   XXIII, 

THE  SUMMING  UP. 

I  undertook  to  show  that  the  player,  William  Shak- 
sper,  could  not  possibly  have  been  the  author  of  the 
poems  and  plays  which  issued  under  the  name  of  Will- 
iam Shakespeare,  and,  if  the  facts  I  have  cited  here  are 
true,  and  the  highest  Shaksperean  authorities  assert 
them  to  be  true,  I  have  proved  my  case. 

It  was  impossible  that  such  a  man  as  the  author  of 
these  works  must  have  been,  by  the  evidence  of  the 
works  themselves,  could  have  sprung  from  a  race  who, 
in  all  their  generations,  had  been  ignorant  and  illit- 
erate, or  could  have  lived  in  a  bookless  neighborhood 
till  his  majority,  without  one  elevating  influence,  and 
afterwards  attained  even  respectability  as  an  author  or 
man  of  learning. 

It  was  impossible  that  a  youth  so  born  and  bred 
should,  in  two  to  five  years,  or  any  number  of  years, 
in  the  low  and  vagabond  profession  he  drifted  into, 
have  acquired  the  learning,  or  the  language,  or  the 
experience,  necessary  for  writing  such  poems  as  Venus 
and  Adonis,  or  any  one  of  the  Shakespeare  plays;  that, . 
under  these  disadvantages,  he  should  have  written  two 
score  plays  in  rapid  succession — of  the  entire  series, 
the  first  discovering  as  much  learning,  familiarity  with 
ancient  and  modern  languages,  acquaintance  with  the 
world,  as  the  last.  Plainly,  he  was  a  thoroughly 
equipped  man  when  he  wrote  his  first  play. 


492  SHAKSPER   NOT  SHAKESPEARE. 

It  was  impossible  that  such  a  youth,  in  two  to  seven, 
or  any  number  of  years,  leading  the  kind  of  life  he 
did,  and  coming  to  Condon  equipped  with  nothing  but 
the  patois  of  Warwickshire,  should  have  acquired  a 
vocabulary  estimated  at  from  15,000  to  21,000  words; 
or  that,  under  the  same  conditions,  he  should  have 
"amalgamated  and  consubstantiated"  the  Latin  lan- 
guage with  his  native  thought. 

It  was  impossible  that,  under  the  same  conditions, 
he  should  have  acquired  Italian,  Spanish  and  French; 
that  he  should  have  become  learned  in  all  the  known 
sciences,  in  all  philosophy,  in  law  and  in  medicine. 

It  was  impossible,  being  the  son  of  John  Shaksper, 
and  reared  as  he  was,  that  he  could  have  grown  up 
with  any  knowledge  of  the  English  Bible;  or  that, 
being  the  man  he  was,  he  should  have  gained  a  knowl- 
edge of  it  after  he  came  to  London — and,  in  fact, 
amalgamated  the  language  of  the  Bible  with  his  native 
thought. 

It  was  impossible  that  a  youth  so  born  and  nurtured 
could  have  conceived  the  female  characters  of  these 
plays;  that  he  could  have  had  any  knowledge  of  courts, 
the  language  and  behavior  of  kings  and  queens,  of 
ladies,  or  of  cultivated  people. 

It  was  impossible  that  the  author  of  these  works,  if 
he  lived,  and  studied,  and  wrote,  and  at  the  same  time 
was  a  player  at,  and  manager  of,  a  theater  in  Condon, 
a  city  of  scarcely  more  than  half  the  population  that 
Washington  has  to-day,  could  have  been  unknown  to 
other  literary  men  of  the  time;  that  in  an  age  of  dia- 
ries, and  correspondence,  and  pamphlets,  vast  stores 
of  which  have  been  preserved,  and  are  accessible  to 


THE   SUMMING   UP.  493 

students,  and  which  abound  in  the  gossip  of  the  day, 
in  anecdotes  and  allusions  to  every  man  of  eminence  in 
every  department;  that  in  the  papers  and  letters  of  the 
great  families  where  the  player  was  "petted  and 
courted,"  according  to  his  modern  worshipers, — South- 
ampton, Rutland,  Essex,  Montgomery,  or  of  Raleigh, 
Cecil,  Coke,  Tobie  Mathew,  and  multitudes  of  other  let- 
ter writers  then  living, — there  should  not  be  one  men- 
tion of  him.  ' '  He  was  unknown  to  the  men  of  that  age, ' ' 
not  merely  to  those  enumerated,  but  to  "any  other  of 
less  note  among  the  statesmen,  scholars  and  artists, 
except  the  few  of  his  fellow-craftsmen. ' '  So  Ingleby 
and  Richard  Grant  White  declare,  and  they  state  the 
fact. 

It  was  impossible  that  the  author  of  these  works 
should  have  returned  to  his  native  place,  lived  there 
and  died  there,  and  left  no  tradition  or  testimony  as 
to  his  literary  labors;  that  he  should  have  left  no 
library — not  even  a  book-case  or  a  writing  desk — no 
books,  no  manuscripts,  no  writings  of  any  description; 
that  his  last  Will,  a  Will  "of  great  particularity,"  the 
Will  of  a  man  who  valued  property,  should  have  no 
mention  of  what  possessed  a  large  money  value,  namely, 
books,  and  the  manuscripts  of  the  plays  in  question, 
if  he  really  possessed  them. 

It  was  impossible  that  a  man  of  such  amazing  eru- 
dition should  not  have  valued  knowledge  and  learning, 
and  should  have  been  wholly  indifferent  to  the  educa- 
tion of  his  children. 

It  is  impossible  that  such  learning,  such  vast  accom- 
plishments, should  have  been  domiciled  at  Stratford, 
and  no  memory  of  it  reach  the  next  generation.  His 


494  SHAKSPER   NOT   SHAKESPEARE. 

sister,  Joan  Hart,  lived  for  thirty  years  after  his  death, 
or  to  1646;  his  daughters  Susanna  and  Judith  until 
1649  and  1662;  his  grand-daughter,  L,ady  Barnard, 
until  1670;  hundreds  of  persons  who  had  known  him 
personally,  or  whose  fathers  had  known  him,  were  liv- 
ing in  the  last  part  of  the  century,  when  literary  Eng- 
land had  become  alive  to  the  importance  of  preserving 
every  item  respecting  so  illustrious  a  man;  and  yet  the 
result  of  all  investigation  was,  "we  never  knew  or 
heard  anything  of  William  Shaksper  except  as  a  poor 
boy  who  lived  in  this  town,  ran  away,  came  back  a 
rich  man,  and  bought  New  Place.  Concerning  plays 
or  writings  of  any  sort,  we  know  nothing. ' ' 


As  to  the  kind  of  man  the  player  was,  I  look  upon 
him  as  a  hard,  griping,  conscienceless,  remorseless 
man,  piling  up  his  ducats,  devoted  to  that  alone — "A 
tyger's  heart  wrapped  in  a  player's  hyde. ' '  Certainly 
I  would  as  lief  have  had  Shylock  for  my  creditor  as 
William  Shaksper.  Ratsie's  Ghost,  published  in  1605, 
gives  some  parting  advice  to  a  young  player,  telling 
him  to  go  to  London,  '  'where  he  would  learn  to  be  fru- 
gal and  thrifty;  to  feed  upon  all  men,  but  let  none 
feed  on  him;  make  his  hand  a  stranger  to  his  pocket; 
his  heart  slow  to  perform  his  tongue's  promise;  and 
when  he  felt  his  purse  well  lined,  to  buy  some  piece  of 
lordship  in  the  country;  that,  growing  weary  of  play 
ing,  his  money  may  bring  him  to  dignity  and  reputation; 
that  he  need  not  care  for  no  man — no,  not  for  them 
that  before  made  him  proud  with  speaking  their  words 


THK   SUMMING   UP.  495 

on  the   stage."     (Their  words,   not  his  own,    be  it 
noted. ) 

This  is  one  of  the  few  mentions,  before  spoken  of, 
by  the  player's  contemporaries,  testifying  to  him  as  a 
man,  and  accepted  by  all  the  commentators  as  unques- 
tionably referring  to  Shaksper. 

On  the  player's  retirement  to  Stratford,  he  continued 
his  business  of  loaning  money,  prosecuting  his  debtors 
even  unto  prison,  (his  neighbors,  always  poor  men). 
Richard  Grant  White,  though  his  ardent  worshiper,  is 
compelled  to  cry  out:  "The  pursuit  of  an  impoverished 
man  for  the  sake  of  imprisoning  him,  and  depriving 
him  both  of  the  power  of  paying  his  debts  and  sup- 
porting himself  and  family,  is  an  incident  in  Shak- 
spere's  life  which  it  requires  the  utmost  allowance  and 
consideration  for  the  practice  of  the  time  and  country 
to  enable  us  to  contemplate  with  equanimity — satis- 
faction is  impossible." 

Evidently,  some  of  the  player's  acquaintances  did 
not  regard  him  as  the  "gentle  Shakespeare",  as  Ben 
Jonson  satirically  characterized  him. 

The  failure  to  educate  his  children  is  evidence  of 
penuriousness  as  well  as  of  paternal  negligence;  his 
failure  to  assist  his  father,  and  his  utter  neglect  of  his 
wife  is  further  evidence  of  penuriousness;  so  also  is  his 
charging  the  corporation  of  Stratford  with  the  cost  of 
two  quarts  of  wine  furnished  to  a  preacher  at  his  own 
house. 

The  Shaksperean  biographers  tell  us  that  these 
plays  were  not  written  for  the  love  of  singing,  but  for 
money,  to  fill  his  pockets  and  to  get  on  in  the  world. 
Mrs.  Dall  says  he  sang  like  a  bird,  because  he  could 


496  SHAKSPER   NOT 

not  help  singing.  He  lisped  in  numbers,  for  the  num- 
bers came.  Not  at  all:  "At  the  expense  of  investing 
him  with  a  sordid  disposition",  as  Dr.  Ingleby  puts 
it,  he  sang  for  pelf  alone;  that  is,  of  course,  if  he  were 
the  author  of  the  plays,  which  I  deny. 

To  sum  up,  in  the  words  of  one  who  has  weighed 
his  character  well,  William  Shaksper  was  a  drunkard, 
a  poacher,  a  liar,  litigious,  an  oppressor  of  the  poor, 
an  unfaithful  husband,  an  adulterer,  and  a  negligent 
father.  There  is  not  recorded  of  him  one  noble  ac- 
tion. 

The  pen-picture  of  one  of  Sir  Walter  Besant's  charac- 
ters agrees  exactly  with  my  idea  of  player  and  manager 
Shaksper:  "He  looked  the  kind  of  man  who  feels 
really  happy  when  he  sits  in  a  bar  parlor  with  a  glass 
of  something  hot,  and  a  few  congenial  companions; 
one  of  those  who  laugh  like  ten  men  over  the  choice 
quips  and  delicate  stories  and  deftly  turned  epigrams 
with  which  the  evening  would  be  enlivened;  one  who 
would  be  popular  with  these  tavern  friends;  and  whose 
popularity  would  be  in  no  way  lessened  by  the  knowl- 
edge that  he  spent  his  business  hours  in  overreaching 
his  clients,  besting  his  friends,  grinding  the  noses  of 
the  poor,  and  exacting  the  letter  of  his  bond."  Be- 
hold the  man! 

This  man  came  to  Condon  with  no  polished  accom- 
plishments— "almost  destitute  of  them",  according  to 
Halliwell-Phillipps.  He  never  learned  to  write,  and 
no  one  can  say  with  knowiedge  that  he  ever  learned  to 
read,  for  there  is  not  the  least  evidence  that  he  ever 
went  to  school  or  received  instruction;  and  no  one  has 
recorded  having  ever  seen  him  with  a  book  in  his 


THE   SUMMING   UP.  497 

hand.  He  died  with  as  few  polished  accomplishments 
as  he  had  when  he  entered  London,  without  a  book  or 
a  paper,  with  plenty  of  money  and  nothing  else,  un- 
lamented  by  any  one  and  known  to  nobody. 

That  is  the  sort  of  man  William  Shaksper,  player 
and  money-lender,  was. 

"Knew  you  ever  a  scholar  whose  soul  had  utterly 
escaped  the  softening  influence  of  thought  and  study  ?" 


Who,  then,  did  write  the  "Shakespeare"  plays? 

It  has  been  the  habit  of  the  Shakspereans  to  scout, 
and  rage  at,  the  suggestion  that  Francis  Bacon,  or  his 
brother  Anthony,  had  a  hand  in  them,  on  the  ground 
that  these  men  had  not  the  poetical  faculty,  nor  the 
technical  skill  to  compose  plays;  though,  without  one 
scrap  of  evidence,  they  assure  us  that  William  Shak- 
sper had  an  excess  of  both  technical  skill  and  poetical 
faculty.  Knowing  nothing  about  him,  they  claim 
everything  for  him. 

And  yet  the  critical  Dr.  Brandes  tells  us  that  "the 
characteristic  of  the  period  was  the  immense  rush  of 
productivity  in  the  direction  of  dramatic  art.  Every 
Englishman  of  Elizabeth's  time  could  write  a  tolerably 
good  play,  just  as  every  second  Greek  in  the  age  of 
Pericles  could  model  a  tolerably  good  statue,  or,  as 
every  European  of  to-day  can  write  a  passable  news- 
paper article." 

Then,  as  if  to  give  poor  Francis  Bacon  a  chance, 
Professor  Wendell  discovers  that  the  world  has  all 
along  been  under  a  mistake  as  to  the  power  and  sig- 
nificance of  these  plays;  that,  given  the  habit  of 


498        SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKKSPKARK. 

writing,  and  a  certain  trick  of  expression,  and  a  few 
compendiums  and  Elizabethan  histories,  and  Coke 
upon  lyittleton,  the  plays  are  not  so  remarkable  as  the 
uninitiated  have  thought.  Moreover,  to  show  how 
very  easy  it  must  have  been  in  Elizabeth's  time  to 
compose  a  Shakespeare  play,  the  Professor  has  tried 
his  own  hand,  and  enriched  the  language  with 
"Raleigh  in  Guiana."  It  would  seem  then  to 
humbler  individuals  that  possibly  either  one  of  the 
writers  named,  and  some  score  others,  might  have 
worked  on  the  Shakespeare  plays  without  violence  to 
probability.  I  would  suggest  that  searchlights  be 
turned  on  the  judicious  Hooker,  or  the  worthy  Donne, 
or  the  learned  Coke,  or  Tobie  Matthew,  or  Lord 
Burleigh  himself.  One  and  all  apparently  had  the 
habit  of  writing  and  the  trick  of  expression. 

Or,  if  these  names  are  not  satisfactory,  give  a 
thought  to  the  many  acknowledged  play-writers  of 
that  age,  university  men,  who  wrote  singly,  or  in 
collaboration— Daniel,  Marlowe,  Greene,  and  the  rest, 
lyook  for  peculiarities  in  the  vocabularies  of  the  recog- 
nized wrorks  of  these  authors ;  words,  lines,  or  sen- 
tences, identical  with  anything  in  the  Shakespeare 
plays;  traces  of  thought  akin  to  what  is  found  in 
these  plays.  For  Hamlet,  and  some  of  the  greatest, 
I  would  suggest  that  a  writer  possessing  the  require- 
ments of  Professor  Wendell  be  looked  for;  one  who 
had  access  to  a  "library  of  compendiums  and  his- 
tories"; one  who  had  some  knowledge  of  Coke  on 
lyittleton;  but  above  all,  one  with  "a  concrete  habit  of 
thought  and  phrase,"  whatever  that  may  mean.  Or, 
a  writer  possessing  the  requirements  of  Ruggles,  one 


THK   SUMMING   UP.  499 

"thoroughly  familiar  with  the  Baconian  Philosophy"; 
one  ''who  was  a  philosopher  first  and  then  a  poet;" 
one  of  "bold  innovating  genius;"  one  who  "obtained 
his  conceptions  by  study  and  meditation."  When 
found,  make  a  note  of.  Or  a  writer  possessing  the  re- 
quirements of  Mr.  Fleay;  one  "accustomed  to  soli- 
tude;" one  "who  had  suffered  much;"  one  "capable 
of  great  concentration";  sure  signs  of  the  real  au- 
thor, Mr.  Fleay  asserts.  It  is  possible  that  such 
writers  may  be  found,  if  sought  for;  and  when  found, 
it  will  be  seen  that  they  are  natural  and  sensible  men, 
not  inspired  dunces.  For  myself,  I  prefer  the  myriad- 
minded  Shakespeare  of  Coleridge  and  John  Owens  to 
the  Shaksper  of  Halliwell-Phillipps,  and  Ingleby, 
and  Wendell;  "the  profound,  original  thinker  and 
reasoner;"  the  man  who  had  "acquired  his  intimate 
knowledge  of  the  Hamletic  type  of  intellect  from  in- 
introspection" ,  to  anything  in  the  line  of  money- 
grubber,  beer-guzzler,  variety-show  clown  and  man- 
ager, who  spent  twenty-five  years  of  his  life  in  cater- 
ing to  the  rabble  of  London. 


INDEX. 


ERRATA. 

"Kasselstadt"  for  "Kesselstadt,"  List  of  Illustrations, 
"piece"  for  "piece,"  page  6,  seventh  line  from  top. 
"Woodberry"  for  "Woodbury,"  page  10,  ninth  line  from  top. 

Same.         page  399,  twelfth  line  from  bottom. 
"1859"  for  "15*9,"  page  65,  seventeenth  line  from  top. 
"pantomine"  for  "pantomime,"  page  76,  fourth  line  from  top. 
"ot"  for  "of,"  page  87,  third  line  from  bottom. 
"Shakes-speare"  for  "Shakespeare,"  page  93,  first  line  from  top. 
"Chamberlain"  for  "Chamberlain's,"  page  108,  third  line  from 

bottom. 

"ran-away"  for  "run-away,"  page  i  iS.  ninth  line  from  bottom. 
The  comma  at  end  of  sixth  line  from  top  (after  "us"),  page  123, 

should  be  a  period. 

"sponser"  for  "sponsor,"  page  327,  sixteenth  line  from  top. 
vStrike  out  the  comma  after  "neighbors,"  page  426,  seventeenth 

line  from  top. 
Put  quotation  marks   la-fore   the  word  "been,"  page  443,  first 

line  from  top. 


Boston  Public  Library  version  of  the 
three  will  signatures,  396. 

Boy  of  Stratford,  cut,  26. 

Brandes,  Dr.  George,  evidence  that 
the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays 
had  traveled  on  the  continent,  238. 


VI    onarvv-a^virtiv.,    *!<_>. 

Clark,   Prof.   N.  G.,  on  the  language  of 

Shakespeare,  210. 
Coleridge,     Hartley,    on    the    classical 

allusions  of  Shakespeare,  109. 
Coleridge,  Samuel  T.,  Shakespeare  as  a 


philosopher,  226. 


(5oi) 


INDEX. 


Acherly,  Thomas,  allusion,  278. 
Actors  were  individual  wanderers,  50. 

Archer, William,  on  the  play  of  Edward 

HI,  58. 

Arden,  Robert,  inventory  of  goods,  13. 
Arden,  Mary,  her  life  in  girlhood,  13. 
Authors,  life — style  of,  69. 

Bacon,  Dr.  Leonard,  on  the  social  sta- 
tion of  the  planters  of  New  England, 
18. 

Bacon,  Francis,  ignorance  of  Shake- 
speare, 287. 

Baker,  Sir  Richard,  mention  of  player 
Shaksper,  292. 

Barnfeild,  Richard,  mention  of  Shake- 
speare, 271. 

Barnfeild,  Richard,  speaks  of  Shake- 
speare as  poet,  but  not  as  play-writer, 
325. 

Basse,  William,  lines  on  William  Shake- 
speare, 292. 

Baynes,  Dr.,  on  Shakespeare's  use  of 
certain  words,  203. 

Baynes,  Dr.,  on  the  imagined  curricu- 
lum at  Stratford  school,  429. 

Baynes,  Dr.,  on  Venus  and  Adonis  and 
its  motto  from  Ovid,  78. 

Baynes,  Dr.,  on  Venus  and  Adonis 
and  Lucrece,  all  thoroughly  Ovid- 
ian,  86. 

Baynes,  Dr.,  on  William  Shakespeare's 
proficiency  in  the  classics,  441. 

Bell,  Sir  Charles,  on  the  medical  knowl- 
edge of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  225. 

Blackfriars  Theater,  101. 

Blackfriars  Theater,  no  proof  that  W. 
Shaksper  ever  acted  at,  101. 

Bodenham,  John,  mention  of  Shake- 
speare, 262. 

Bolton,  Edmund,  cites  Shakespeare,  280 

Bolton,  Edmund,  enumerates  poets,  322. 

Books,  absence  of,  at  Stratford,  at. 

Books,  cumbrous  and  costly  in  Shake- 
speare's day,  214. 

Boston  Public  Library  version  of  the 
three  will  signatures,  396. 

Boy  of  Stratford,  cut,  26. 

Brandes,  Dr.  George,  evidence  that 
the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays 
had  traveled  on  the  continent,  238. 


Brandes,  Dr.  George,  on  the  rush  of 
productivity  in  the  direction  of  dra- 
matic art  in  Elizabeth's  time,  497. 

Brandes,  Dr.  George,  on  William  Shake- 
speare's familiarity  with  high  life,  246. 

Brown,  David  Paul,  on  the  knowledge 
of  medical  jurisprudence  shown  in  the 
plays,  226. 

Bucknill,  J.  C.,  M.D.,  on  the  medical 
knowledge  of  the  Shakespeare  plays, 
224. 

Bunyan,  John,  his  early  education,  44. 

Burns,  Robert,  his  early  education,  43, 

Burr,   Wm.    H.,   proof   that    Shaksper 

could  not  write,  408. 
Burritt,  Elihu,  his  early  education,  46. 
Burton,  Robert,  introducing  his  psuudo 

likeness,  319. 
Byington,    Dr.,    on    the    Puritans   who 

came  to  Massachusetts,  18. 

Camden,    William,    enumerates    poets, 

323- 
Campbell,    Lord  Chief  Justice,  on  the 

legal  language  used  in  the  plays{  221. 
Campbell,  Lord  Chief  J  \stice,  opinion 

of  the  justices'   courts   it   Stratford, 

220. 
Carew,  Richard,  mentions  Shakespeare, 

Carew,  Richard,  praise  of  Sidney,  321. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  on  early  culture,  42. 
Centurie  of  Prayse,  The,  3,  259. 
"Chaffed    the   Players," — an    example, 

103. 
Chamberlain's   Company,    travels 

through  England,  135,  136. 
Chamberlain,   John,    absence    of  men- 
tion of  Shaksper  in  correspondence, 

414. 
Chettle,      Henry,     author     of    "  Kind 

Heart's  Dream,"  276;  his  apology  for 

Robert  Green,  276. 
Clark,   Mrs.  Cowden,  On  the  language 

of  Shakespeare,  210. 
Clark,   Prof.   N.  G.,  on  the  language  of 

Shakespeare,  210. 
Coleridge,    Hartley,    on    the    classical 

allusions  of  Shakespeare,  199. 
Coleridge,  Samuel  T.,  Shakespeare  as  a 

philosopher,  226. 


502 


INDEX. 


Collier,  J.  P.,  his  dishonesty  exposed, 
132. 

Collier,  J.  P.,  on  the  Elizabethan  thea- 
ters, 98. 

Collier,  on  the  publication  of  the  Pas- 
sionate Pilgrim,  73. 

Corbin,  John,  on  Jonson's  lines,  intro- 
ducing the  Droeshout  likeness,  318. 

Corbin,  John,  on  the  Flower  portrait, 
470. 

Craik,  Prof.  George  L.,  on  the  language 
of  Shakespeare,  210. 

Craik,  G.  L.,  on  popular  education  in 
the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  447. 

Craik,  on  the  Prefatory  Address  to  the 
Folio,  351,  357. 

Craik,  on  the  universality  of  Shake- 
speare, 211. 

Crosse,  probable  reference  to  William 
Shaksper,  289. 

Cunningham,  P.,  his  forgeries,  130,  133, 
134- 

Dall,  Mrs.,  conviction  that  Shaksper 
spent  some  years  on  the  continent, 
238. 

Dall,  Mrs.  Caroline,  on  Chettle's  words, 

Dall,  Mrs.,  on  Shaksper's  distinguished 
friends,  417. 

Dall,  Mrs.,  on  William  Shaksper's  social 
station,  18. 

Davies,  John,  of  Hereford,  allusions  to 
player  Shaksper,  268. 

Davies,  John,  possible  allusions  to  same, 
269,  270.  . 

Demonstration,  the,  i. 

Description  of  the  horse  in  Venus  and 
Adonis  borrowed  from  Du  Bartas,  85. 

Desk,  at  Stratford,  shown  as  William 
Shaksper's,  30. 

Dickens,  Charles,  on  the  life  of  Shak- 
sper, 264. 

Digges,  Leonard,  on  plays  at  the  Globe 
Theater,  136. 

Digges,  Leonard,  prefatory  lines,  360. 

Digges,  Leonard,  on  Romeo  and  Juliet, 
162. 

Disraeli,  Benj.,  on  certain  practises  of 
the  booksellers,  318. 

Disraeli,  Benj.,  on  the  Prefatory  Ad- 
dress to  the  Folio,  353. 

Donnelly,  I.,  on  Shaksper's  Will,  382. 

Donnelly,  Ignatius,  on  the  gulf  between 
the  quality  and  the  common  people  in 
Shaksper's  time,  70. 

Donnelly,  I.,  on  the  Shakespeare  vo- 
cabulury,  197. 

Doran,  Dr.,  on  the  versions  of  the 
Shakespeare  plays  after  the  Resto- 
ration, 333. 

Dowdall,  Rev.  Mr.,  result  of  his  in- 
quiries at  Stratford,  423. 


Dowden,  Edward,  LL.D.,  on  the  Eliza- 
bethan theater,  97. 

Dowden,  Dr.,  on  the  Prefatory  Address 
to  the  Folio,  356. 

Drake,  Dr.  Nathan,  on  paucity  of  al- 
lusions to  vicinity  of  Stratford  in  the 
plays,  432. 

Drake,  on  the  rights  of  author  and 
owner  of  a  play,  76. 

Drake,  on  the  exhibitions  at  the  thea- 
ters, no. 

Drake,  on  trie  scrivener  signing  the  first 
sheet  of  a  will,  404. 

Drummond,  William,  his  character  of 
Ben  Jonson,  348. 

Drummond,  William,  notes  on  Jonson's 
remarks  on  Shakespeare,  340. 

Dryden,  John,  on  the  Shakespeare 
plays,  329. 

Dumb-shows  popular  towards  1587,  100, 
161. 

Emerson,  R.W.,  on  the  genius  of  Shake- 
speare, 227. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  on  the  language  of 
Shakespeare,  210. 

Evelyn,  John,  on  certain  Shakespeare 
plays,  328. 

Field,  Dr.,  on  the  medical  knowledge 
of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  225. 

Fiske,  John,  denies  the  book  learning 
of  Shakespeare,  212. 

Fiske,  John,  estimation  of  the  legal 
knowledge  of  the  Shakespeare  plays, 
221. 

Fleay,  F.  G.,  on  Jonson's  lines  prefixed 
to  the  First  Folio,  306. 

Fleay,  Shaksper  unmentioned  by  con- 
temporaries, 415. 

Fleay,  on  Shaksper's  will,  381. 

Fleay,  on  the  absence  of  allusions  to 
Shakespeare,  286. 

Fleay,  on  the  Elizabethan  theaters,  98, 
99. 

Fleay,  on  the  superiority  of  the  second 
quarto  of  Hamlet  to  the  Folio  copy,  78. 

Fleay,  the  origin  of  the  play  houses  and 
playing  companies,  99. 

Forged  signature  in  Florio  Montaigne, 
411. 

Forrnan,  Dr.  Simon,  account  of  per- 
formance of  Cymbeline,  159. 

Forman,  account  of  performance  of 
Macbeth,  156. 

Forman,  account  of  performance  of  The 
Winter's  Tale,  159. 

Forman,  his  account  of  the  performing 
of  three  Shakespeare  plays,  153. 

Freeman,  Thomas,  lines  on  Shake- 
speare. 281. 

Free  school  at  Stratford,  supposed  sys- 
tem of  instruction,  20. 


503 


Free   school   at   Stratford,   the    annual 

charge  for,  22. 
Fuller,   on  the  imaginary  wit-combats, 

etc.,  361. 
Furnivall,  Dr.  J.  C.,  Fresh  allusions  to 

Shakespeare,  261. 
Furnivall,     on     Gervinus'     studies     of 

Shakespeare,  226. 

Gallon,  Dr.  Francis,  on  heredity,  41. 
Globe  Theater,  built  in  1599,  107. 
Goadby,  Dr.,  on  the  instruction  of  the 
common    people    in  Shaksper's   day, 

Goethe,  on  Shakespeare  as  a  writer  and 
psychologist,  230. 


Gollancz,  Israel,  on  Othello,  134. 
..ear  of 
speare,  149 


Gollancz,  Israel,  on  the  Lt 


Shake- 


opinion  of 


Gollancz,  on  the  Quarto  of  Romeo  and 

Juliet,  77. 

Gosson,  on  the  London  theaters,  112. 
Green,   J.  R.,   on    the   last   dramas  of 

Shakespeare,  375. 
Greene,  on   Shakespeare's   proficiency 

in  the  science  of  Heraldry,  235. 
Greene,  Robert,   complaint  against  an 

upstart-crow,  etc. — Phillipps  and  In- 

gleby  thereon,  54,  55. 
Greene,  Robert,  lines  believed  to  have 

been  aimed  at  player  Shaksper,  297. 
Greene,  Robert,  on   the  upstart-crow, 

273. 
Greene,    Robert,   his    Groatsworth    of 

Wit,  275. 

Greenwich  Fair,  play  at,  142. 
Grosart,   Alexander  13.,  his  opini 

Shaksper,  297. 
Guilpin,    Edward,    among   poets   omits 

to  name  Shakespeare,  324. 

Hall,  Dr.,  mentions  death  of  Shaksper 
in  his  note-book,  424. 

Hallam,  on  Shakespeare  phrases,  201. 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  as  to  how  the 
Shakespeare  plays  came  to  be  writ- 
ten, 231. 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  on  Shaksper's  con- 
dition when  he  made  his  will,  380. 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  on  Shaksper's  will, 
383- 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  on  the  popularity 
of  ist  Henry  VI,  161 ;  of  Romeo  and 
Juliet,  162. 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  the  Elizabethan 
theater,  96. 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  on  the  theaters,  in, 
112. 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  Outlines,  2. 

Hall's  Chronicle  not  in  John  Shaksper's 
house,  21. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  on  genius,  460. 

Hamlet,  on  the  capacity  of  the  ground- 
lings, 125. 


Hamlet,  ridicule  of  the  style  of  playing 
in  vogue,  126. 

Hamlet,  the  play  of,  exists  in  three 
forms,  145. 

Hathaway,  Ann,  her  cottage;  Richard 
Grant  White  on  same,  17. 

Hazlitt,  William,  oil  Love's  Labour's 
Lost,  63. 

Heard,  F.  F.,  on  Shakespeare  as  a  law- 
yer, 223 

Heine,  on  the  historical  value  of  the 
Shakespeare  plays,  234. 

Heminge  and  Condell,  350. 

Henslowe's  Diary ;  the  prices  paid  for 
new  plays,  181. 

Henslowe,  Philip,  description  of,  120. 

Henslowe,  diary  of,  71. 

Heywood,  Thomas,  mention  of  Shak- 
sper, 288. 

Heywood,  Thomas,  reference  to  the 
author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays, 
270. 

Holmes,  Judge,  on  the  Sonnets,  372. 

Holmes,  Judge,  on  Shakespeare's  use 
of  certain  words,  202. 

Holmes,  Dr.  O.  W.,  on  a  child's  train- 
ing, 41- 

Hume,  David,  on  William  Shake- 
speare, 332. 

Ingleby,  Dr.  C.  J.,  on  absence  of  allu- 
sions to  Shakespeare,  ignorance  of 
contemporaries  as  to  Shakespeare,  282. 

Ingleby,  on  the  estimation  of  the  plays 
of  Shakespeare.  146. 

Ingleby,  on  the  prefatory  address  to 
the  Folio,  352,  353,  356. 

Ingleby,  on  the  social  standing  of  play- 
ers, 81. 

Impertinence,  on  the,  of  the  assump- 
tion that  William  Shaksper  conceived 
the  female  characters  of  the  plays, 
244. 

Jaggard,  William,  publishes  The  Pas- 
stonate  Pilgrim  as  Shakespeare's,  72. 

Johnson,  Judge  Jesse,  on  the  Sonnets, 
366. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  criticism  on  the 
Shakespeare  plays,  331. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  on  the  condition 
of  the  lower  classes,  12,  22. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  on  the  condition 
of  the  common  people  in  Shake- 
speare's day,  153. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  on  the  number  of 
copies  of  the  first  two  Folio  editions 
of  the  plays,  334. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  on  William  Shak- 
sper's first  employments  in  Lon- 
don, 50. 

Jonson's  Bartholomew  Fair;  how  class- 
ical plays  were  travestied,  122. 


504 


IND^X. 


Jonson,  Ben,  apostrophe  to  player 
Shaksper,  336. 

Jonson,  Ben,  does  not  speak  of  "  Shake- 
speare" in  his  Discoveries,  346. 

Jonson,  Ben,  his  insincerity,  339. 

Jonson,  Ben,  his  lines  eulogizing  the  art 
of  Shakespeare,  341. 

Jonson,  Ben,  his  praises  of  Francis 
Bacon,  345. 

Jonson,  Ben,  his  ridicule  of  plays  of 
Shakespeare,  327. 

Jonson,  Ben,  his  "Timber,  or  Discov- 
eries, 344. 

Jonson,  Ben,  lines  introducing  the  por- 
trait in  the  First  Folio,  317. 

Jonson,  Ben,  lines  on  Poet-Ape  believed 
to  be  aimed  at  Player  Shaksper, 
295. 

Jonson,  Ben,  lines  prefixed  to  the  First 
Folio,  304. 

Jonson,  Ben,  mention  of  player  Shak- 
sper, 346. 

Jonson's  Poetaster,  attack  on  the 
King's  Company.  116. 

Kempe,  or  Kemp,  William,  cut  of,  60. 

King  Henry  VI,  the  work  of  Marlowe; 
also  the  Richard  III  and  other 
plays,  56,  57. 

Knight,  Charles,  his  life  of  Shake- 
speare, 19. 

Knight,  Charles,  on  Shakespeare's  use 
of  certain  words,  202. 

Knight,  Charles,  on  the  "corrections, 
etc.,  of  the  Second  Quarto  of  Romeo 
and  Juliet,  77. 

Knight,  Charles,  on  Romeo  and 
Juliet,  140. 

Knight,  Charles,  pn  the  Roman  plays 
of  Shakespeare,  120,  199. 

Knight,  Charles,  on  the  Quartos,  358. 

Knight,  Charles,  on  Troilus  and  Cres- 
sida,  149. 

Lamb,  Charles,  on  the  Tragedies  of 
Shakespeare,  147. 

Lee,  Sidney,  accounts  for  the  learning 
in  the  law  of  the  Shakespeare 
plays,  219.  I 

Lee,  Sidney,  his  copy  of  the  three  Will 
signatures,  400. 

Lee,  Sidney,  on  Love's  Labour 's 
Lost,  63. 

Lee,  Sidney,  on  Shaksper's  Will,  381 

Lee,  Sidney,  on  the  publication  of  the 
16  Quartos,  72. 

Lee,  Sidney,  on  William  Shaksper's  in- 
difference to  piracy  of  the  Shake- 
speare plays,  77. 

Legal  papers,  latitude  allowed  in  ex- 
ecuting, 403. 

Libraries,  no  public  libraries  in  Shake- 
speare's day;  private,  very  rare,  214. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  his  early  educa- 
tion, 45. 


Lodge,  Thomas,  among  poets  omits  to 

name  Shakespeare,  324. 
Lord    Mayor  to   Privy  Council,  on  the 

London  theaters,  in. 
Lord  Strange's  Company,  108. 
Love's   Labour's  Lost,  the  first  of  the 

Shakespeare  plays  performed,  62. 

Macaulay,  Thomas  B.,  on  books  in 
Shakespeare's  day,  on  the  use  of 
Latin  in  the  i6th  century,  215. 

Madden,  Judge,  on  Shakespeare's  ac- 
curacy in  the  use  of  the  language  of 
Falconry,  235. 

Malone,  Edmund,  his  fac-simile  of  the 
three  Will  signatures,  394. 
The  same,  enlarged,  395. 
Letters  of,  much  enlarged,  398. 

Malone,  Edmund,  investigations  as  to 
William  Shaksper,  90. 

Malone,  Edmund,  on  Shaksper's 
Will,  382. 

Malone,  Edmund,  on  the  forged  Ireland 
letters,  79. 

Malone,  Edmund,  on  the  Walker  deed 
and  mortgage,  386. 

Manningham,  John,  account  of  the  per- 
formance of  Twelfth  Night,  153,  154. 

Manningham,  John,  relates  gossip  con- 
cerning Shaksper,  266. 

Marlowe,    Christopher,    his     contribu- 
tions to  the  Shakespeare  plays,  59. 

Marsh,  George  P.,  on  the  language  of 
Shakespeare,  211. 

Marsh.  George  P.,  on  the  vocabulary 
of  the  Shakespeare  works,  196. 

Mary's  letter  from  California,  349. 

Massey,  Gerald,  on  Francis  Bacons 
obligation  to  Shakespeare,  489. 

Massey,  Gerald,  on  the  Sonnets,  368. 

Meiklejohn,  Prof.  J.  M.  D.,  on  the 
language  of  Shakespeare,  211. 

Meiklejohn,  Prof.,  on  the  varied  knowl- 
edge  of  the   author   of  the   Shakes- 
peare plays,  243. 

Meres,  Francis,  attributes  twelve  plays 
to  Shakespeare,  74. 

Meres,  Francis,  enumerates  poets,  321. 

Meres,  Francis,  mentions  of  Shake- 
speare, 279,  280. 

Mermaid,  The,  Shaksper  not  a  mem- 
ber of  that  club,  362. 

Milton,  John,  an  Epitaph,  299. 

Milton,  John,  lines  on  L'Allegro,  300. 

Milton,  John,  his  early  education,  41. 

Alontague,  Mrs.,  on  Shakespeare  as  a 
moral  philosopher,  217. 

Morgan,  Dr.  A.,  on  instruction  of  chil- 
dren in  Wm.  Shaksper's  time,  23. 

Morgan,  Dr.,  on  the  Stationer's  Com- 
pany, and  the  rights  of  printers,  353. 

Morgan,  Dr.,  on  Venus  and  Adonis; 
absence  of  Warwickshire  patois  in 
same,  83. 


INDEX. 


505 


Naylor,  Edward  W.,  on  Shakespeare's 
acquaintance  with  music,  235. 

O'Connor,  W.  D.,  on  the  Sonnets,  369. 
Othello,  based  on  Cinthio's  novel,  311. 
Owens,  John,  on  Hamlet,  231-233. 

Pepys,  Samuel,  on  Shakespeare  plays, 
328. 

Percy,  Dean,  on  certain  practices  of  the 
booksellers'  319. 

Performances  at  Court,  166,  168. 

Players,  status  of  in  reign  of  Eliza- 
beth, 80. 

Plays  first  printed  in  the  Folio,  310. 

Plays  bearing  the  same  name  as  certain 
Shakespeare  plays,  128-130. 

Plays,  in  the  last  half  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  were  generally  written  in 
collaboration,  70. 

Plays  not  now  attributed  to  Shake- 
speare, 72. 

Pott,  Mrs.  Constance,  on  Shakespeare's 
lack  of  description  of  country 
scenes,  436. 

Proposition,  The,  i. 

Quiney,  Adrian,  letter  to  Shaksper,  177. 
O_uiney,    Richard,     letter     to    William 
Shaksper,  n,  17. 

Rankins  on  the  Theatre  and  the  Cur- 
tain, 112. 

Ratsies'  Ghost;  advice  to  a  player,  50, 
268. 

Reed,  Edwin,  on  the  Prefatory  Ad- 
dress of  the  Folio,  352. 

References  or  allusions  to  William  Shak- 
sper, 250. 

Returne  from  Parnassus,  lines  believed 
to  refer  to  player  Shaksper,  295. 

Returne  from  Parnassus,  mentions  Mr. 
Shakespeare,  262. 

Returne  from  Parnassus,  speaks  of 
Shakespeare  as  poet,  but  not  as  play- 
writer,  325. 

Rogers,  Prof.  Thorold,  on  the  lack  of 
education  in  Shaksper's  day,  446. 

Rolfe,  Dr.  W.  J.  Shakespere,  the  boy, 
in  Youth's  Companion,  24. 

Rolfe,  Book  of  same  name,  26. 

Rowe,  Nicholas,  1709,  notes  on  William 
Shaksper,  88. 

Ruggles,  Henry  J.,  on  the  familiarity  of 
the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  Plays 
with  Bacon's  philosophy,  227-229. 

Ruggles,  Henry  J.,  on  the  language  of 
Shakespeare,  211. 

Rymer,  Thomas,  on  the  Shakespeare 
Plays,  330. 

Sala,  Geo.  A.,  Conviction  that  the  wri- 
ter of  the  Shakespeare  Plays  had 
traveled  in  Italy,  238. 


Schlegel  on  Shakespeare,  226. 

Schoolmasters  of  Shaksper's  day,  447. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  held  in  special  ven- 
eration as  a  poet,  326. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  on  the  state  of  the 
drama  in  his  time,  95. 

Signet  ring  marked  W.  S.  shown  at 
Stratford,  31. 

Shakespeare  as  a  physicist  and  natural 
philosopher,  235. 

Shakespeare  Plays,  enlarged,  etc.,  for 
the  Folio,  311, 

Shakespeare  Plays  after  the  Restora- 
tion, 168,  169. 

Shakespeare  Plays,  few  mentions  of 
them  in  contemporary  literature,  284. 

Shakespeare  Plays,  seventeen  had  been 
performed  and  seven  printed  anon- 
ymously up  to  1598 — list  of  the  latter, 
69. 

Shakespeare  Plays,  shortened  for  per- 
forming, 141. 

Shakespeare's  Legal  Acquirements,  by 
Lord  Campbell,  221. 

Shakespeare  the  name  of  a  band  or 
club  of  authors,  72. 

Shakespeare,  William,  evidences  that 
he  had  traveled  extensively,  237. 

Shakespeare,  William,  his  familiarity 
with  courts,  etc.,  244. 

Shakespeare,  William,  his  knowledge  of 
French,  Italian,  Spanish,  243. 

Shakespeare,  William,  ignorance  of  con- 
temporaries respecting,  335. 

Shakespeare,  William,  the  name  used 
on  plays  by  many  authors,  115, 

Shaksper,  John,  application  for  coat- 
armour,  186-188. 

Shaksper,  John  and  Mary,  absolutely 
illiterate,  12. 

Shaksper,  John,  butcher,  after  his  mar- 
riage, I2.-33. 

Shaksper,  Jonn,  fills  several  offices,  29. 

Shaksper,  John,  litigious,  30. 

Shaksper  has  no  goods  that  could  be  dis- 
trained, 30. 

Shaksper,  John,  in  prison  for  debt,  30. 

Shaksper,  John,  fined  for  having 
amassed  a  sterquinarium  before  his 
house,  15. 

Shaksper's,  John,  house  at  Strat- 
ford, 16. 

Shaksper,  John,  secretly  attached  to 
the  Catholic  religion,  115. 

Shaksper,  John,  tenant  of  Robert  Ar- 
den,  62. 

Shaksper,  John,  marries  Mary,  Rob- 
ert's daughter,  62. 

Shaksper,  John,  though  unable  to  write, 
made  up  the  accounts  of  the  bor- 
ough, 23. 

Shaksper,  John,  made  his  signature 
with  a  mark,  23. 


506 


INDEX. 


Shaksper,  variations  of  the  name,  7-11. 

Shaksper,  William,  as  a  business  man, 
177-179. 

Shaksper,  William,  attempts  at  enclos- 
ure of  the  common  land,  190. 

Shaksper,  William,  as  a  player,  174. 

Shaksper,  William,  buys  a  lot  from 
Henry  Walker,  385. 

Shaksper,  William,  executes  a  mortgage 
deed  on  same,  385. 

Shaksper,  William,  apprenticed  to  a 
butcher;  account  of  the  old  Stratford 
parish  clerk,  54. 

Shaksper,  William,  died  a  papist,  ac- 
cording to  Vicar  Davis,  115. 

Shaksper,  William,  did  not  go  to  Lon 
don  with  histrionic  intentions,  49. 

Shaksper,  William,  discovered  as  a  ris- 
ing actor  and  dramatist,  according  to 


Phillipps,  in  1592,  53. 
Shaksper,  William,  doj 


aggerel  verses  on 
John-a-Combe,  53. 

Shaksper,  William,  Drake's  version  of 
his  five  signatures,  392. 

Shaksper,  William,  Dr.  Rolfe  on  mar- 
riage of,  37. 

Shaksper,  William,  evidence  of  penu- 
riousness,  189. 

Shaksper,  William,  exercised  his  fa- 
ther's trade  of  butcher,  according  to 
Aubrey,  33. 

Shaksper,  William,  gaining  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  world  at  Stratford,  35. 

Shaksper,  William,  flies  to  Lendon,  39. 

Shaksper,  William,  his  death,  379. 

Shaksper,  William,  his  prosecution  of 
debtors,  182. 

Shaksper,  William,  his  signature  to  the 
counterpart  of  the  Walker  deed,  387, 

391- 
Shaksper,  William,  his  signature  to  the 

Walker  mortgage,  390. 
Shaksper,  William,  his  visit  to  Bidford, 

ShX'sper',  William,  his  Will,  380. 
Shaksper,|William,  his  vocabulary  when 

he  came  to  London,  195. 
Shaksper,    William,    language     spoken 

on  arrival  at  London,  193. 
Shaksper,   William,     married    to    Ann 

Whately,  36. 
Shaksper,  William,  no  evidence  extant 

respecting    his   career   from  1589    to 

Shaksper,  William,  no  proof  that  he 
went  to  school  in  boyhood,  20. 

Shaksper,  William,  supposed  to  have 
left  school  at  13  years  of  age,  30. 

Shaksper,  William,  went  to  London  at 
21  years  of  age,  according  to  Halli- 
well-Phillipps;  at  22,  according  to 
R.  G.  White;  at  23,  according  to 
Fleay,  49. 


Shaksper,  William,  wild  in  his  younger 

days,  according  to  Rowe,  37. 
Shaksper,  William,  words  spoken  to  the 

town  clerk  of  Stratford,  191. 
Shaksper,    William,    visits  Stratford  in 

1587,  and  not  again  till  1596,  52. 
Southampton,  Lord,  apochryphal  story 

of  a  loan  to  Shaksper,  179. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  on  heredity,  41. 
Spencer,    Edmund,    does    not   refer   to 

Shaksper  in  Colin  Clout,  266. 
Statue  of  William   Shaksper   in  Cong. 

Library,  471. 
Statute  of  39  Elizabeth  and  i  James  on 

players,  82. 
Steevens,    George,    on    the   number   of 

copies  of  the  first  Folio  edition  of  the 

Plays,  334. 
Stefansson,  Jan,  belief  that  the  writer 

of  Hamlet  had  visited  Denmark,  238-- 

241. 
Stotsenburg,   Judge  John   H.,   on    the 

Sonnets,  370. 
Stotsenburg,   Judge  John    H.,    on   the 

vocabulary  of  the  Shakespeare  Plays 

195. 
Stratford  Free  School,  R.  G.  White  on 

same,  21. 
Stratford-on-Avon,  condition  in  1564  and 

years  following,  14. 
Stratford-on-Avon,  no  mention  of  in  the 

plays,  431. 

Stubbs,  on  the  London  theaters,  107. 
Swan  Theater,  De  Witt's  sketch  of  and 

description,  106. 
Swinburne,   A.  G.,  onj  Marlowe's  place 

and  value  among  English  poets,  68. 
Symonds,  Prof.  J.  A.,  on  the  Doubtful 

Plays,  313. 
Symonds,    Prof.  J.A.,  on   the   London 


erformances  at 
a   visit  to  the 


theaters,  113,  114. 
Symonds,   Prof.  J.  A.,  P 
Elizabethan  Theater; 
Fortune,  102,  114. 


Taine,  on  the  English  theaters,  time  of 

Elizabeth,  94. 

Tarleton,  Richard,  cut  of,  61. 
Taylor,    John,    enumerates    the   poets, 

Theaters,  Private,  two  only,  98,  99. 
Theobald,  Dr.  W.,  on  Shakespeare's  use 

of  certain  words,  203-207. 
Titus  Andronicus,  play  of,  138,  et  seq. 
The  Chamberlain's  company,  108. 
The  Chandos  portrait,  479. 
The     Droeshout    likeness    of    William 

Shaksper,  464-467. 
The  dumb-show,  141. 
The  Felton  portrait,  473. 
The  Flower  portrait,  467-471. 
The  Gower  best  likeness,  484. 
The  Jansen  portrait,  480. 


INDEX. 


507 


The  Kesselstadt  death-mask,  480-483. 
The  King's  Company,  108. 
The  Old  Geronimo,  The  play  of,  140. 
The  Othello,  Quarto  and  Folio,  310. 
The   Passionate    Pilgrim,  published   as 

by  Shakespeare,  72. 
The  Shakespeare  plays  at  court,  143. 
The  Shakespeare  plays  not  acted  at  any 

private  theater,  121. 
The   Shakespeare    plays   not    acted    at 

length  at  any  public  theater,  121. 
The  Shakespeare  plays  not  written  for 

Shaksper's  theater,  142,  143. 
The  Sonnets,  363. 
The  Stratford  bust,  473-479. 
The  theaters  in  London,  94  ct  sea. 
The  Tragical  Reign  of  Selim,  The  play 

of,  140. 

The  Quarterly  Review,  on  Shake- 
speare's unobservance  of  animated 

nature,  434-436. 
Thrale,  Mrs.,  obloquy   caused   by   her 

marriage  with  Piozzi,  87. 
Trench,  on  the  maker  of  words,  200. 
The  Zucharo  portrait,  479. 

Venus   and   Adonis,  publication   of,   in 

1593,  67. 
Vocabulary  of  the  Shakespeare   plays, 

195. 
Vocabulary  of  Milton's  Works,  195. 

Wallace,  Dr.  A.  R.,  accounts  for  the 
learning  in  the  law  of  the  Shakes- 
peare plays,  220. 

Wallace,  Dr.  A.  R.,  as  to  how  William 
Shaksper  acquired  a  knowledge  of 
high  life,  248. 

Wallace,  Dr.  A.  R.,  how  Shaksper  ac- 
quired knowledge,  453. 

Walpole,  Horace,  on  genteel  comedies, 
63. 

Ward,  Rev.  John  A.,  result  of  his  in- 
vestigations at  Stratford,  422. 

Warner,  Prof.  B.  E.,  on  Shakespeare  as 
a  writer  of  History,  233. 

Warner,  William,  rank  as  a  poet,  266. 

Warwickshire  dialect,  example  of,  194. 

Warwickshire,  few  mentions  of,  in  the 
plays,  431. 


Webster,  Daniel,  on  acquisition  of 
knowledge,  460. 

Webster,  John,  enumerates  Shake- 
speare with  other  poets,  291. 

Webster,  John,  mention  of  several  po- 
ets, 322. 

Weever,  John,  apostrophe  to  Shake- 
speare, 279. 

Weever,  John,  lines  by,  73. 

Weismann,  Dr.  Aug.,  on  uninstructed 
musical  genius,  42. 

Wendell,  Prof.  Barrett,  accounts  for  the 
Shakespeare  vocabulary,  214. 

Wendell's  characterization  of  the 
Elizabethan  theaters,  no. 

Wendell,  Barrett,  his  play  of  Raleigh  in 
Guiana,  342. 

Wendell,  Barrett,  on  the  apparent 
learning  of  the  plays,  455. 

Wendell,  Prof.  Barrett,  on  the  collabo- 
ration of  Greene,  Peele,  Kyd  and 
Marlowe  in  the  Henry  VI  plays,  58. 

Whately,  Ann,  marries  Shaksper,  36. 

White,  R.  G.,  on  Shaksper's  Will,  381. 

White,  Richard  Grant,  on  the  learning 
in  the  law  of  the  Shakespeare  plays, 
219. 

White,  R.  G.,  Shaksper  unknown  to 
any  one  of  note,  415. 

White,  Rowland,  letters,  361. 

White,  Thos.  W.,  on  the  authorship  of 
the  Shakespeare  plays,  309. 

White,  Thomas  W.,  on  the  Venus  and 
Adonis,  that  Marlowe  wrote  it,  68. 

White  and  Reed  discover  evidence  of 
some  great  imposture  on  the  stage 
in  Shaksper's  time,  296. 

Whittington,  Thomas,  loan  of  40  shil- 
lings to  Ann  Shaksper,  52. 

Winter,  William,  on  Shaksper's  condi- 
tion when  he  made  his  Will,  380. 


Woncot,  mention  of,  in  the  plays,  431 
Wordsworth,    Bishop  Charles,   on    t 


the 


life  of  Shakspere,  264. 
Wordsworth,  Bishop,  on  Shakespeare 

and  the  Bible,  216,  217. 
Wotton,  Sir  Henry,  absence  of  mention 

of  Shaksper  in  correspondence,  414. 


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